USB flash drive wont mount!!

tecksk8er001 · 05-03-2007, 03:32 PM

My distro is Fedora core 5.
Lately I have been having trouble with USB flash drives and any USB Storage device such as SD card readers, Memory Stick readers, and my Sony PSP with a Memory Stick PRO Duo.
Upon inserting any of the above, nothing happens!
When I open up the Computer It lists the USB device but when I click on the device i.e. "SanDisk Cruzer Micro" I get the Error:
"Cannot mount volume
You are not privileged to mount the volume 'CRUZER USB'."

This happens even if I am root.
I have never had any problem with these USB devices before, just last week they were mounting and sowing up on the desktop just fine!

I don't know if it has to do with something I updated with yum or something else I did but I never had this problem before.

Any help would be great.

theNbomr · 05-03-2007, 05:52 PM

It is very hard for anyone to interpret the semantics of 'I click on the device'. But, if you do something like post the output of an appropriate mount command, an fdisk -l command, an lsusb command and an 'ls -ls mountpoint', then there might be enough information to go on. The relevant line from fstab would help, too.
Oh, and please post your results in CODE tags, so we can read it the way it was meant to show up.

--- rod.

jschiwal · 05-03-2007, 07:03 PM

Does FC5 use udev to create the device? Does it use hal helper programs or hotplugging to do the mounting.

You might want to enter "sysinfo:/" in konqueror. Can you right click on the device and select mount?

Also try restarting the hal, dbus and udev daemons. Sometimes that helps when there is an automounting problem.

If you have entries for any of these devices in fstab, make sure that you use the "noauto" and "user" options. The "user" option will allow you to mount the device manually. For automounting, a udev rule is supposed to give the user either ownership or group ownership. So double check the permissions on the device created itself.

If you want to create fstab entries for some of these devices, I would recommend using "UUID=<uuid of device>" instead of the device. You can find out the UUID number of a partition using the udevinfo program. For example: "udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sdb1"

tecksk8er001 · 05-03-2007, 07:34 PM

You will have to forgive me, I am new to Linux and I'm a GUI sucker.
I really don't know much about the terminal commands but I will try some of your suggestions though I'm not really sure how to do that but I'll let you know what I get.

tecksk8er001 · 05-03-2007, 08:38 PM

I know I am completely ignorant but this is what I got.

First I gained root access with the su command and then I tryed mount -l:

Code:

[root@localhost sk8er]# mount -l
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw) [/boot]
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
automount(pid1798) on /net type autofs (rw,fd=4,pgrp=1798,minproto=2,maxproto=4)

I really have now idea what to do with this.

Next I opened up my /etc/fstab:

Code:

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

It dose not look like there is an entry for /dev/sda1(my 256mb USB Flash drive) or /dev/sdb1(my 1gb Memory Stick PRO Duo in PSP connected by USB)

Next I tried /sbin/fdisk -l:

Code:

[root@localhost sk8er]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 20.5 GB, 20525137920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2495 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/hda2              14        2495    19936665   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sda: 262 MB, 262144000 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 250 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         250      255984    6  FAT16

Disk /dev/sdb: 997 MB, 997195776 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 951 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1         950      972615+   6  FAT16

/dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 are both listed so the computer can see them but why wont it mount them?

I then tried using the mount command with /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1:

Code:

[root@localhost sk8er]# mount /dev/sda1
mount: can't find /dev/sda1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab
[root@localhost sk8er]# mount /dev/sdb1
mount: can't find /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

I think I am not using the mount command the right way.

Well I hope this is enough info to give any of you an idea of whats wrong, if not you will have to tell me what to try next because I have no clue

And also when right click on the CRUZER USB(256mb flash drive) Icon in the "Computer" directory I just gives me this error:

Code:

Cannot mount volume
You are not privileged to mount the volume 'CRUZER USB'.

saikee · 05-04-2007, 05:51 AM

I think reading the "mount" help page or a search of the instruction for this command will help.

Mounting in Linux is always to mount a "device" on a branch of the filing system.

Therefore one needs to

(1) Create a branch on the filing system. The common mounting point is either /mnt or /media. Thus one needs to create a temporary, say "temp", subdirectory first and this requires root privilege. The instruction is

Code:

sudo mkdir /mnt/temp

If FC5 you should be able to log in as root and using the mkdir command without prefix it with sudo. Alternatively you can log in as an ordinary user but click "root terminal" and supply the root password. Everything to do in the root terminal will be treated as privileged operations.

(2) Acutal mounting by command

Code:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/temp

You can check the information become immediately available by command

Code:

ls /mnt/temp

Thereafter you will find it in the desktop uder the folder /mnt/temp.

The above is to mount the device sda1 manually. To mount it automatically in every boot up one needs to edit /etc/fstab to add a new entry there.

jschiwal · 05-04-2007, 06:01 AM

If you want mount the device manually as a regular using you can add a line to /etc/fstab. (Using an editor as the root user). The fstab and mount man pages should help.

When I add an fstab entry for a removable device, I use the UUID instead of the device. This way, the next time you plug it in, if it is assigned a different device, such as /dev/sdb1, there won't be a problem.
You can use "udevinfo" to find the uuid of the partition. Here is an example of the process for a pendrive on my laptop:

Code:

> udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sdc1
ID_VENDOR=SanDisk
ID_MODEL=Cruzer_Mini
ID_REVISION=0.1
ID_SERIAL=SanDisk_Cruzer_Mini_SNDK41A4B41C47300502
ID_TYPE=disk
ID_BUS=usb
ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:02.2-usb-0:2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=vfat
ID_FS_VERSION=FAT16
ID_FS_UUID=3B69-1AFD
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=

Now using "sudo vim /etc/fstab" I will add a line to my /etc/fstab file:

UUID=3B69-1AFD /media/Cruzer type vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower,user 0 0
Make sure to user your UID or username for the "uid=" option. My uid is 1000.

Then create the mount point:
mkdir /media/Cruzer

Now you can mount it manually by entering "mount /media/Cruzer" and unmount with "umount /media/Cruzer".
You don't need to be root to do it, thanks to the "user" option.

Jecoen · 05-16-2007, 05:52 PM

Hello, this is a solution for mounting one device "manually", it is no good for me. With my old kernel 2.6.17 any usb device mounted cleanly and even opened a window so I could browse the files, but I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.20 and my /etc/mtab makes the line " automount(pid2356) /net autofs rw,fd=4,pgrp=2356,minproto=2,maxproto=4 0 0" and a pid for usb-storage is made. I can see the devices are there:
/dev/sdc1 * 1 50 51184 6 FAT16
/dev/sdc2 51 1968 1964032 b W95 FAT32

but they won't mount automatically as they did on the old kernel.

Can you help?

Jecoen · 05-16-2007, 06:06 PM

On my old kernel 2.6.17 the removable devices, mounted automatically, this means it updated the /etc/mtab entry. I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.20 and the device behaves as described in this thread. I can mount it manually, but this is not a good solution for me. The computer has several users and usb removable devices.

When I add an fstab entry for a removable device, I use the UUID instead of the device. This way, the next time you plug it in, if it is assigned a different device, such as /dev/sdb1, there won't be a problem.
You can use "udevinfo" to find the uuid of the partition. Here is an example of the process for a pendrive on my laptop:

Code:

> udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sdc1
ID_VENDOR=SanDisk
ID_MODEL=Cruzer_Mini
ID_REVISION=0.1
ID_SERIAL=SanDisk_Cruzer_Mini_SNDK41A4B41C47300502
ID_TYPE=disk
ID_BUS=usb
ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:02.2-usb-0:2:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=vfat
ID_FS_VERSION=FAT16
ID_FS_UUID=3B69-1AFD
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=

Now using "sudo vim /etc/fstab" I will add a line to my /etc/fstab file:

UUID=3B69-1AFD /media/Cruzer type vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=lower,user 0 0
Make sure to user your UID or username for the "uid=" option. My uid is 1000.

Then create the mount point:
mkdir /media/Cruzer

Can you help?
best regards