[Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

Mr. Bougo · 2012-07-04 21:30:54

Hi,

I installed xfce4 today. I am starting it with SLiM, with my .xinitrc launching xfce with "exec startxfce4".

My problem is that my usb devices (thumb drive and external HDD) do not show up on the desktop or on Thunar's sidebar. I do not seem to have ConsoleKit-related issues: reboot/power off are not grayed out. When I manually mount them with pmount, the volumes show up and I can unmount them after entering my password. Then, they disappear.

My user account is in the storage group. I have installed gvfs, polkit-gnome and the dbus daemon is started on boot. I also tried to install gamin, gnome-disk-utility, gvfs-afc but no dice. I did not touch any udev configuration files.

I have tested the same with startx and ck-launch-session and dbus-launch but it makes no difference.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Last edited by Mr. Bougo (2012-07-05 09:00:28)

Bellum · 2012-07-04 22:05:07

You say it isn't a console-kit problem, but shouldn't it be

exec startxfce4 --with-ck-launch-session

Mr. Bougo · 2012-07-04 22:11:36

Bellum wrote:

You say it isn't a console-kit problem, but shouldn't it be
exec startxfce4 --with-ck-launch-session

The notes on the wiki say SLiM does that on its own and no ck-launch-session or --with-ck-launch is necessary. I think I still gave it a try. I will try again tomorrow just to make sure. In any case, ConsoleKit-related features seem to work fine as I said in the top post.

Bellum · 2012-07-04 22:22:55

OIC. Hold on, lets see. Do you have thunar-volman installed? Is Enable Volume Management checked in Edit->Preferences->Advanced?

Terminator · 2012-07-04 22:25:51

Install gvfs, gvfs-afc and thunar-volman, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xf … le_Devices.

Mr. Bougo · 2012-07-04 22:28:28

Bellum: Somebody on IRC told me that thunar-volman is not actually needed to mount the volumes. It is used to have automatic actions following mounting and such. Anyway, I did try having thunar-volman and it didn't change a thing. I did get these errors though:

    thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type.
    thunar-volman: Unsupported USB device type.
    thunar-volman: Unknown block device type.
    thunar-volman: Unknown block device type.

I did quite a bit of googling on these issues, to no avail.

Terminator: I did install these, and I did read that wiki page.

Terminator · 2012-07-04 22:35:48

Ow sorry, I see it's even in your first post. I just said it because on my xfce (also a very recent install), thunar showed and mounted usb-sticks without any troubles after installing those.

I bet it's SLIMs fault (without any good reason). Now I'm going to sleep. Good luck!

2ManyDogs · 2012-07-04 22:38:49

Try disabling SliM and just starting Xfce from the console with "startx"

you may need to add consolekit to the exec line in xinitrc if you do this.

(random sidebar rant -- I don't understand how much time people spend worrying about USB automounting. Just use "sudo mount" or "pmount" or "usbmount" or any of the other relatively easy ways to manually mount USB drives. Seriously -- do you mount and unmount USB drivesso often that it's worth all the time you spend researching and fixing this problem, or does it just irritate you because it used to work? /rant)

(edit) -- sorry; I didn't see that you'd already tried without SLiM.

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-07-04 22:40:29)

Mr. Bougo · 2012-07-04 22:38:55

Terminator: As said above, I also tried it with startx with several combinations of ck-launch-session and dbus-launch in my .xinitrc.

Good night!

EDIT: 2ManyDogs: I tried startx too (see above). I completely agree with you on automatic mounting, but I hoped I could make the system more accessible to other users not familiar with the command line. Otherwise, I personally am perfectly happy with pmount.

Last edited by Mr. Bougo (2012-07-04 22:41:29)

Bellum · 2012-07-04 22:48:16

2ManyDogs wrote:

(random sidebar rant -- I don't understand how much time people spend worrying about USB automounting. Just use "sudo mount" or "pmount" or "usbmount" or any of the other relatively easy ways to manually mount USB drives. Seriously -- do you mount and unmount USB drivesso often that it's worth all the time you spend researching and fixing this problem, or does it just irritate you because it used to work? /rant)

It's fairly common, just like floppies used to be. I imagine their are a lot of people who want to get at their digital camera/flash drive/mp3 player on a daily basis.

Bougo:
That changes everything!

No idea what. I'm not actually an expert, I only play one on the Internet.

Well... It seems to imply that there's no problem detecting that a device was plugged in, but there was a problem actually mounting the device. Perhaps there's something wrong with them or how they're formatted? Do they work on other computers? Other Linux computers?

2ManyDogs · 2012-07-04 22:50:24

Bellum wrote:

2ManyDogs wrote:
(random sidebar rant -- I don't understand how much time people spend worrying about USB automounting. Just use "sudo mount" or "pmount" or "usbmount" or any of the other relatively easy ways to manually mount USB drives. Seriously -- do you mount and unmount USB drivesso often that it's worth all the time you spend researching and fixing this problem, or does it just irritate you because it used to work? /rant)
It's fairly common, just like floppies used to be. I imagine their are a lot of people who want to get at their digital camera/flash drive/mp3 player on a daily basis.

I access USB drives daily. I have no problems with pmount or "sudo mount" but that's just me.

Mr. Bougo wrote:

EDIT: 2ManyDogs: I tried startx too (see above). I completely agree with you on automatic mounting, but I hoped I could make the system more accessible to other users not familiar with the command line. Otherwise, I personally am perfectly happy with pmount.

Thank you. This makes much more sense.

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-07-04 22:51:39)

oboedad55 · 2012-07-05 04:42:59

The wiki suggests devmon from the AUR. I'm having very good results with udiskie which is in community.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xf … le_Devices

Last edited by oboedad55 (2012-07-05 04:43:20)

Mr. Bougo · 2012-07-05 08:23:00

Bellum wrote:

Well... It seems to imply that there's no problem detecting that a device was plugged in, but there was a problem actually mounting the device. Perhaps there's something wrong with them or how they're formatted? Do they work on other computers? Other Linux computers?

It's an NTFS partition on an external HDD and the Arch core iso on a usb thumb drive. Both can be mounted just fine with pmount.

oboedad55 wrote:

The wiki suggests devmon from the AUR. I'm having very good results with udiskie which is in community.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xf … le_Devices

Sounds good, since my volumes show up on the desktop when mounted. But that is going to auto-mount all inserted removable media, which I find a bit annoying. I would rather have them mounted only when I access them from thunar or the desktop.

edit: FWIW, I gave LXDE a try and I have the same problem there with PCManFM.

edit: Well well well. It somehow started working now. My NTFS volume shows up unmounted on the desktop. Great! For the record, I only have gvfs and polkit-gnome installed and am still running xfce4 through SLiM with exec startxfce4 in my .xinitrc.

Thank you all for your time! I really wish I knew what went wrong in the first place...

Last edited by Mr. Bougo (2012-07-05 09:00:06)

Bellum · 2012-07-05 09:07:54

It's an NTFS partition on an external HDD and the Arch core iso on a usb thumb drive. Both can be mounted just fine with pmount.

Huh! My Arch install flash drive isn't showing up, either. My MP3 player shows up fine. I'm not sure what the difference is.

I'm glad you somehow got it working regardless. You was gonna see a grown man cry because of his lack of tech support skills. :'(

Last edited by Bellum (2012-07-05 09:08:11)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-07-04 21:30:54

[Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#2 2012-07-04 22:05:07

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#3 2012-07-04 22:11:36

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#4 2012-07-04 22:22:55

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#5 2012-07-04 22:25:51

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#6 2012-07-04 22:28:28

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#7 2012-07-04 22:35:48

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#8 2012-07-04 22:38:49

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#9 2012-07-04 22:38:55

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#10 2012-07-04 22:48:16

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#11 2012-07-04 22:50:24

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#12 2012-07-05 04:42:59

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#13 2012-07-05 08:23:00

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

#14 2012-07-05 09:07:54

Re: [Solved] XFCE, Thunar: Removable USB devices do not show up

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