I wasn't sure if I should put this in hardware, so I put it here instead. I added the line

/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda auto noauto,user,ro 0 0

to my fstab file in order to get the pictures from my digital camera (Konica KD-100 if it matters). It works ok, but I can't mount when I'm using my normal user account. I get the message: "mount: only root can do that". I thought by putting "user" in the options list, I'd be able to use my user account and not have to su to root . Could someone explain please?

Also, when I'm done with my camera and need to use "umount /dev/sda1", sometimes I get a message saying /mnt/sda is busy. Is there any way I can tell that it's busy, so I know to wait before issuing umount, or do I just leave it for a few minutes and try?

Thanks for any answers!

man mount:

user Allow an ordinary user to mount the file system. The
name of the mounting user is written to mtab so that he
can unmount the file system again. This option implies
the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev (unless overridden
by subsequent options, as in the option line
user,exec,dev,suid).

users Allow every user to mount and unmount the file system.
This option implies the options noexec, nosuid, and nodev
(unless overridden by subsequent options, as in the
option line users,exec,dev,suid).

change user to users and that should do it.

Nope, that didn't work either. I thought it was a permissions problem, so I did "chmod a+rwx /mnt/sda", but I still get "mount: only root can do that". Should I change the owner using chown?

Thanks again.

It can be confusing... root can only mount a /dev even if you have 'user' set in fstab... users can mount the "mount point" only... /mnt/thumdrive...

A user can mount a device like this:
mount /mnt/thumbdrive

root can mount like this:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/thumbdrive

If you mount as root and then access as user then go back to root to attempt to unmount it may give you busy message if user is still accessing...

use:
fuser -m /mnt/mount_point

This will give you a list of running processes for that specific drive... You can then kill the process to release the drive for unmounting...

Hope this makes a little sense...

KC

Thanks kencaz, that's helpful .

Didn't know that. Good info!!

As to the device being busy, fuser is indeed a great command to use, but often the 'busy' warning is simply because you nautilus/konqueror/you preferred graphical app still has an open window with the device you're trying to unmount so all you need to do is close it.