I have just updated my system from SuSe 9.0 to 9.2 - this has upded by kernel from 2.4 to 2.6 and my KDE from 3.? to 3.3.

Under 9.0 when I wanted to use my usb 2.0 flash memory stick, I would mount it in KDE, and it was a bit flakey but no real problem. In 9.2, KDE automatically mounts the device. It does this fine, but when I try and navigate through the files in Konquerer, the whole system completely hangs, to a degree I didn't think was possible in Linux - I can't even get to a command line to shutdown. Total disaster. I left it 20 minutes and then just cut the power, not something I want to do again.

My question is, where do I start investigating - KDE? Kernel? Device drivers? I'm a bit of a newbie, so any ideas would be much appreciated.

Hi, I have a similar and a different problem, the similar problem is, that the external USB HD IOMEGA 80 GB and the iRiver Jukebox were correctly mounted, but after a certain amount of transactions the system undergoes a hard freeze, just like you experienced. I changed the following, I got all the actual SuSE Updates (there are already quite a few), I updated to KDE 3.3.1 (with the packages found on the suse server) and I disabled the SuSE watcher.

I know this is not the scientific way of addressing the problem, but it works now without freezing.

The different problem is, that the USB Stick that worked and works under Suse 9.1, Mepis and Mandrake 10.0 refuses to work with 9.2 ... it can't be that difficult to have FULL USB support , except for SuSE ...

Hope it helps.

BEnjamin

I want to try mounting the device manually, ie the proper way, but kde always dows it automatically. Does anybody know how to turn this off in KDE?

Hi David,
I cannot help you concerning this behavior in KDE in general, but to turn this behavior OFF in SuSE 9.2 you have to disable hotplug. This can be achieved in the following way (there might be other ways also): in the file /etc/sysconfig/hotplug there is more at the bottom of the file the option

HOTPLUG_DO_MOUNT=yes

change this into

HOTPLUG_DO_MOUNT=no

then you will have to edit your etc/fstab. Remove the device entry created by udev/hotplug and replace it with something convenient, for example:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 auto noauto,user,rw 0 0

(beware of the spaces, they have to be set correctly). Note that you must create the directory media/sda1 in the case above. You can also use mnt/myusbstick or whatever, but this then needs to be specified in the fstab entry. If you are in doubt which options to take, take an entry of a windows partition (if there is one ...). For a simple explanation: the first term is the device the second the directory in which it will be displayed, then comes the partitiontype ("vfat" for FAT partitions "reiserfs" for reiser and so on her the option "auto" means that the devices filesystem type will be recognized automatically (in the very most cases). "noauto" specifies that it will not be mounted at boot time you can set this to auto if you want to (useful for a USB HD that stays connected). "user" means that a user account will have the right to mount the device, "rw" means that it will be readable/writable. The digits I do not know, and there are several other options I do not really know either. Anyone yho knows a nice introduction into fstab options my post a link here ;-)

I did this hotplug "switch" yesterday and the problem seems solved by now. You can create a shortcut on the desktop pointing at the device, so the access is nearly as fast as with hotplug.

Sorry if my explanations were too lenghty, there are newbies and newbies, and I still would consider myself as one, since I found this workaround only I did not manage it myself ... so no knowhow here, only knowwhere.

BEnjamin

Thank you very much, that was extremely helpful