Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

Janusz11 · 2009-10-13 14:13:39

Hello!

I am unable to mount drives like USB sticks or external hard drives that are formatted with a FAT file system in Xfce4. I can mount and unmount DVDs or external hard drives that are formatted with ext2 just fine. But not FAT. However, I can mount the FAT drives manually.

Xfce4 gives me the following error message:

Unable to mount "31G Volume":

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error 
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail  or so

dmesg | tail shows the following error concerning the file system:

FAT: IO charset ISO-8859-15 not found
FAT: IO charset ISO-8859-15 not found

It seems to me that something is missing. But I don't have a clue what.

This is a fresh Arch Linux i686 installation on a Dell laptop.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

xavi · 2009-10-13 15:42:22

same problem here with my usb stick. i hope that some update will fix this problem.
I'll check as soon i go home!

thefatprecious · 2009-10-13 17:28:03

I don't know what the underlying reason is, however I had/have the same issue. Try using pmount/pumount from the console as a workaround. That seems to work for me for now...

xavi · 2009-10-13 17:46:21

I'm not an expert, but i think it's something related to hal.
The problem is still here with last updates.

Mounting manually the usb pen is a workaround, but i want full thunar functionality.

Janusz11 · 2009-10-13 22:30:25

xavi wrote:

I'm not an expert, but i think it's something related to hal.

What I find strange then is that I can mount DVDs and external drives with for example an ext2 file system. And I have no problems whatsoever mounting FAT file systems/USB drives on my Arch Linux 64bit system (desktop PC) in Xfce4.

Devastator · 2009-10-14 13:39:20

I have the same issue. I'll check if it happens on other DEs, when I'll be back at home.

smurf · 2009-10-14 14:05:08

Same here. However, pmount works so I am not totally lost...

brendan · 2009-10-14 14:27:10

I have a problem with automount on kde4.3 where hal just complains when I try and put a DVD in. If I mount it by hand it's fine though.

Stupid updates.

Devastator · 2009-10-14 21:56:06

Devastator wrote:

I have the same issue. I'll check if it happens on other DEs, when I'll be back at home.

As I said - I have just checked it on KDE - it works well for me. Perhaps it's the time to change my main DE?

Devastator · 2009-10-17 12:19:46

Sorry for raising this thread again, but I still cannot fix it. The issue is with automounting USB devices using Thunar - it fails, and dmesg tells this:

FAT: IO charset ISO-8859-2 not found
FAT: IO charset ISO-8859-2 not found

I tried using Thunar-devel, and adding usb to kernel hooks in mkinitcpio, but none of these helped. Does anyone have any idea what may cause this issue? DeviceKit? Kernel configuration?

roliveira · 2009-10-17 12:40:42

Hello! First post around here
I had a similar error after updating my system:

FAT: IO charset ANSI_X3.4-1968 not found

You just need to regenerate the locales, I guess one of the updates messed with the /etc/locale.gen. Edit it acordingly and then run the command:

# locale-gen

Further reading http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Configuring_locales

Devastator · 2009-10-18 08:05:25

I tried that before:

Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
  en_US.ISO-8859-1... done
  pl_PL.UTF-8... done
  pl_PL.ISO-8859-2... done

but it did't help. That's why I am confused... Otherwise it would be trivial, but this one I just don't understand.

I have also gone through the wiki article you posted, and I tried changing LOCALE in rc.conf from "pl_PL" to "pl_PL.ISO-8859-2" (rebooted, same issue). Exporting LANG variable did't help either.

I have no idea what's wrong...

roliveira · 2009-10-18 09:59:03

Devastator wrote:

I tried that before:
Generating locales...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
  en_US.ISO-8859-1... done
  pl_PL.UTF-8... done
  pl_PL.ISO-8859-2... done
but it did't help. That's why I am confused... Otherwise it would be trivial, but this one I just don't understand.
I have also gone through the wiki article you posted, and I tried changing LOCALE in rc.conf from "pl_PL" to "pl_PL.ISO-8859-2" (rebooted, same issue). Exporting LANG variable did't help either.
I have no idea what's wrong...

That worked for me.
Try pl_PL.UTF-8 in /etc/rc.conf

Devastator · 2009-10-18 11:37:28

roliveira wrote:

Try pl_PL.UTF-8 in /etc/rc.conf

ha...
ha ha...
ha ha ha...

It works now. I don't understand why this one helped, but it works .
Thanks a lot for help!

smurf · 2009-10-19 08:40:43

As outlined in http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 40#p639840, when using the information in this thread, I was able to mount again, but with the 'benefit' of an error message "FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!" in dmesg. However, I do not see any bad side effects, even Umlauts are displayed correctly, which was not the case, when I changed to UTF-8 a few weeks ago. Therefore, is this error message relevant, or can I ignore it?

mclang · 2009-10-20 05:53:35

I have the same question. Can I ignore "FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems" warning, or should I enable some specific locale from /etc/locale.gen to make sure anything won't get messed up in my usb-sticks?

roliveira · 2009-10-20 23:48:37

smurf wrote:

As outlined in http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 40#p639840, when using the information in this thread, I was able to mount again, but with the 'benefit' of an error message "FAT: utf8 is not a recommended IO charset for FAT filesystems, filesystem will be case sensitive!" in dmesg. However, I do not see any bad side effects, even Umlauts are displayed correctly, which was not the case, when I changed to UTF-8 a few weeks ago. Therefore, is this error message relevant, or can I ignore it?

I think it should be safe to ignore this warning message, I guess the worst thing that can happen is the wrong display of specific language characters in filenames.

Janusz11 · 2009-10-24 09:36:32

Well, I solved this problem for me as well now. I have installed Arch again, this time using the "old" 2009.02 version. I did perform a net-install again. But for whatever reason mounting in Xfce4 works now.

thefatprecious · 2009-10-24 13:50:24

The thunar-volman (0.2.0-1 -> 0.3.80-1) update a few days ago fixed it for me...

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-13 14:13:39

Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#2 2009-10-13 15:42:22

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#3 2009-10-13 17:28:03

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#4 2009-10-13 17:46:21

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#5 2009-10-13 22:30:25

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#6 2009-10-14 13:39:20

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#7 2009-10-14 14:05:08

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#8 2009-10-14 14:27:10

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#9 2009-10-14 21:56:06

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#10 2009-10-17 12:19:46

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#11 2009-10-17 12:40:42

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#12 2009-10-18 08:05:25

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#13 2009-10-18 09:59:03

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#14 2009-10-18 11:37:28

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#15 2009-10-19 08:40:43

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#16 2009-10-20 05:53:35

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#17 2009-10-20 23:48:37

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#18 2009-10-24 09:36:32

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

#19 2009-10-24 13:50:24

Re: Unable to mount FAT drives (USB, external HD) in Xfce4

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