KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

Llama · 2008-08-12 07:39:19

Hi,

I finally had to upgrade to KDE 4 . I'm not too happy, but sticking to the past isn't an option ... Probably a dumb question, but I don't know how to unmount my flash stick. There's a notebook-like icon in the panel which shows the plugged devices, but no unmount option visible. How am I to unmount my USB storage?

Another dumb question, an old one surfacing once again: non-english characters in file names on my flash stick look like '?'. How am I supposed to cope with that under KDE 4 ?

berbae · 2008-08-12 08:53:40

In the Dolphin file manager/Volume the memory stick appears, and by right clicking on it there is a "Safely Remove" option.

Llama · 2008-08-12 09:45:19

Yes, I've got a big fat picture of a flash stick in Dolphin, to the right. Unfortunately, it's absolutely unclickable. It's a notebook (touchpad).
...

Ah!.. It isn't the picture to the right, but "Volume" to the left . The question about non-english characters in vfat and ntfs file names remains .

NTFS device isn't also automounting...

Last edited by Llama (2008-08-12 10:09:52)

berbae · 2008-08-12 12:58:54

On my machine, the non English characters appear well in the file names on a memory stick (vfat).
I have in /etc/rc.conf :
LOCALE="fr_FR@euro"

For the ntfs volumes, I have a Windows partition which is mounted at boot time with this line in /etc/fstab :
/dev/sda1 /windows ntfs-3g silent,fmask=0133,dmask=0022,locale=fr_FR@euro,uid=1000,gid=100 0 0

The non English characters in the file names are well displayed also there.

Llama · 2008-08-12 13:55:26

Your locale could be irrelevant to the problem. I always used en_US.UTF-8 without major issues until I upgraded to KDE4. That is, the solutions from Wiki worked .

berbae · 2008-08-12 16:19:05

Maybe the locale is irrelevant for you, but I just showed you what I use on my machine.

I didn't change anything since the KDE upgrade, and the non English characters are still visible after the upgrade to KDE 4. Nothing was broken for me, concerning the visibility of characters.
The vfat memory stick, mounted by hal, shows the same characters as before the upgrade.

What "solutions from Wiki" are you talking about ? Did you get Cyrillic characters with LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8" with KDE 3 running, and not with KDE 4 ?

Llama · 2008-08-12 16:30:28

Did you get Cyrillic characters with LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8" with KDE 3 running, and not with KDE 4 ?

Exactly

berbae · 2008-08-12 16:38:46

Can you precise what solution from the Wiki you used with KDE 3, I presume to mount your volumes with international characters set ?

Llama · 2008-08-12 17:21:33

(1) USB stick needed no solution at all
(2) CD drive needed minor correction in /etc/fstab, iocharset=utf8 (now it isn't mounting, http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=53338)
(3) for USB NTFS drive there used to be a KDE-specific solution which broke some time ago . It automounted, though incorrectly. Anyway, in case of need I used to unmount it and then mount manually: manual mounting was ok with respect to Cyrillic characters. Now it won't automount at all.

In short, the automounting is broke: CD and USB NTFS drive won't mount at all, USB stick mounts incorrectly.

berbae · 2008-08-12 21:51:03

For the CD drive not mounting you get :
mount: can't find /dev/sr0 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
in your fstab file you have :
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide,iocharset=utf8 0
... (deleted)
Edit : see following message

For the usb ntfs drive, it doesn't automount anymore, but can you mount it manually under root with the ntfs-3g command :
ntfs-3g volume mount_point [-o option[,...]]
or
mount -t ntfs-3g volume mount_point [-o option[,...]]

To use the locale= option, you will need to enable one for the Russian localization.

For the usb memory stick, you can try to mount it manually under root :
mount -t vfat -o rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,sync,noatime device dir
and see in a console (outside KDE, ctrl-alt-F1) if the characters are well displayed or not.

These are suggestions I can think of at the moment.

Last edited by berbae (2008-08-13 09:17:10)

berbae · 2008-08-13 09:08:16

In fact I had not verified on my machine the auto mounting of CD/DVD, and it didn't work also with the same message as you get.
After I followed the archdave advice from the other thread, it works now without error, ie commenting out the lines concerning cdrom and dvd in /etc/fstab.

Last edited by berbae (2008-08-13 09:08:57)

newgargamel · 2008-08-13 09:19:08

berbae wrote:

For the CD drive not mounting you get :
mount: can't find /dev/sr0 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
in your fstab file you have :
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,user,noauto,unhide,iocharset=utf8 0

You can change it to:

/dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide,iocharset=utf8   0 0

for me it works...

Llama · 2008-08-13 10:04:01

No, I can't . I had to comment out the CD/DVD lines from /etc/fstab to make it work, just like berbae said. iocharset=utf8 is a good solution which I used to employ myself - until now .

Llama · 2008-08-13 11:26:34

USB NTFS hard drive is mounted manually, Cyrillic characters, R/W access and all (en_US.UTF-8):

# mount -t ntfs-3g /deb/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs1

I can live with that. I should much prefer, though, that my CD-ROM and USB stick would automount correctly . With Cyrillic characters, that is .

With USB stick this works - almost:

# mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs1/ -o iocharset=utf8

Somehow 'access denied', unlike USB NTFS drive . I don't like the idea of mounting flash sticks manually, anyway.

Last edited by Llama (2008-08-13 12:08:45)

berbae · 2008-08-13 13:05:23

It seems, reading the wiki, that it is possible to add mount options to udev rules or hal configuration files.
So it should be possible to get what you are looking for, though not very easily.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable in udev and hal can help you configure your machine.

BTW it is not clear to me what is the link with the KDE 4 upgrade ?

Llama · 2008-08-13 14:37:38

Maybe someone more knowledgeable in udev and hal can help you configure your machine.

Ah... That's what the thread is all about ...

BTW it is not clear to me what is the link with the KDE 4 upgrade ?

It's not just KDE 4. I've been away on vacation, now it's full system upgrade. Everything is new: kernel, hal, whatever. This is a royal road to messing things up.

These file names is one of the most frustrating problems with Linux. You adopt a satisfactory solution, live with it for a while, then something changes, supposedly for the best - and you are back at sea again.

Llama · 2008-08-13 15:17:35

Snapshots of /etc/mtab:
(1) CD-ROM and flash stick automounted (incorrectly, no Cyrillic characters in file names):

 ...
/dev/sr0 /media/MOVIES iso9660 ro,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/disk vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uid=1000 0 0

(2) flash stick mounted manually (Cyrillic characters show):

 ...
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/ntfs1 vfat rw,iocharset=utf8 0 0

The snapshots look suggestive. Now one has to tell HAL how to behave ...

Llama · 2008-08-14 08:57:34

Got fed up with these as well as with a few lesser issues and reverted to kdemod3. Mounting problems disappeared. I'd better give KDE 4 another six months .

berbae · 2008-08-14 12:18:05

For infos can you please give a snapshot of /etc/mtab when you have a CD and a flash stick automounted with kdemod3?
Can you confirm that now you get the Cyrillic characters when the volumes are automounted ?
Thanks to help others to try to understand what is going on.

Last edited by berbae (2008-08-14 12:18:41)

Llama · 2008-08-14 12:43:09

/etc/mtab (kdemod3, automount):

 ...
/dev/sr0 /media/MOVIES iso9660 ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uid=1000,utf8 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/disk vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,flush,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower 0 0

There's a difference; unfortunately, it's beyond me to explain.

Yes, my Cyrillic characters are OK now (en_US.UTF-8, as usual)

Last edited by Llama (2008-08-14 12:51:54)

berbae · 2008-08-14 13:18:55

The difference is that the utf8 option is passed to the mount command in a configuration file for udev or hal or kde.
The same should be possible under KDE 4.
I intend to study more closely that udev/hal/desktop manager auto mounting process. I need to pass options to the automounting of memory stick (noatime, sync, ...) which are not passed in the default configuration, and seem important for security reasons.
Personally I will stick with KDE 4, because I think missing features will come, and that studying other configuration matters are useful and interesting.
Thanks for the quick answer and good luck for the future.

Last edited by berbae (2008-08-14 13:21:50)

Llama · 2008-08-14 13:32:58

Thank you, too! In case you ever figure the thing out, please, don't keep the knowledge to yourself . Contribute to the Wiki ...

berbae · 2008-08-15 15:28:26

To share what I found today.

Problem : with KDE 4, how to mount (outside CLI) a usb flash memory stick, with the options I think are important, ie noatime, sync, ...

If there is no entry in /etc/fstab for /dev/sdb1, the udev/hal process will create a /media/disk directory for it when a stick is plugged in, but doesn't mount it, its existence is only signaled to KDE.
So in the Dolphin Place panel (the one to the left) a volume appears for it. It is mounted when the volume is clicked, but with default options, ie without the noatime, sync, ... options, which I think is not secure enough.

To get these options, I add an entry with the options I want in /etc/fstab :
/dev/sdb1 /usb-storage vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,sync,noauto,user,noatime 0 0

The mount point has to be an existing directory, different from the one created automatically (which, I suppose, should not exist permanently).

In this case, when a flash memory stick is plugged in, the udev/hal process doesn't create the /media/disk directory and doesn't mount the volume, but its presence is signaled to KDE.
So again a new volume appears in the Dolphin Place panel, and it is mounted when clicked, using the options from the /etc/fstab file, therefore with the noatime, sync, ... more secured options.

This method may probably be adapted for other volumes which require options not automatically used presently by KDE 4 to automount volumes.

Last edited by berbae (2008-08-15 15:35:09)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-08-12 07:39:19

KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#2 2008-08-12 08:53:40

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#3 2008-08-12 09:45:19

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#4 2008-08-12 12:58:54

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#5 2008-08-12 13:55:26

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#6 2008-08-12 16:19:05

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#7 2008-08-12 16:30:28

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#8 2008-08-12 16:38:46

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#9 2008-08-12 17:21:33

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#10 2008-08-12 21:51:03

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#11 2008-08-13 09:08:16

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#12 2008-08-13 09:19:08

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#13 2008-08-13 10:04:01

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#14 2008-08-13 11:26:34

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#15 2008-08-13 13:05:23

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#16 2008-08-13 14:37:38

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#17 2008-08-13 15:17:35

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#18 2008-08-14 08:57:34

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#19 2008-08-14 12:18:05

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#20 2008-08-14 12:43:09

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#21 2008-08-14 13:18:55

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#22 2008-08-14 13:32:58

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

#23 2008-08-15 15:28:26

Re: KDE 4.1 Mounting USB storage

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