[SOLVED] I can not mount usb thumbdrives

I have been mounting thumbdrives for a long time now.
Suddenly the mounting (mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb) has failed, giving this error msg.
"column: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character"
The device had been checked with fdisk -l, and the directory exists.

2 days ago I mounted my new Android phone via usb cable.
I first installed jmtpfs with aptitude, and sucessfully mounted my phone, using "jmtpfs /mnt/".
I was also able to umount it by using "fusermount -u /mnt/".

Yesterday when I inserted a thumbdrive, I got my first failure, and the above error msg.
I have made several attempts using different thumbdrives, and after a reboot, but the failure to mount and the error msg is consistant.

I am running Debian Jessie on a Lenovo T410.

What does

type mount

print?

I am running Debian 8.3 on a desktop machine with two separate hard disks (sda and sdb).

When I plug in a USB drive, it automounts at /media/fred (where fred is my user name). When I issue the mount command (no arguments) on a terminal, the USB drive is recognized as /dev/sdc1.

My desktop is Gnome Flashback. When I open the "Computer" sub-menu item from the top bar menu, it shows the USB drive along with other drives on the system.

The USB drive is also listed by the System Monitor under the File Systems tab.

Are you seeing none of this with USB your drives?

I typed "fdisk -l" and saw /dev/sda{1,2,3,4} (just what I expected)
I typed "mount" and saw a bunch of file systems, /dev, /proc, /dev, ... etc
I inserted a thumbdrive
I typed "fdisk -l" and saw one (1) new device (/dev/sdb1)
"/dev/sdb1 2144 62537727 62535584 29.8G b W95 FAT32"
I typed "mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/"
I now see the error msg, "column: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character"
I typed "mount" and see exactly the same file systems as 5 lines above.

Does this help?

Originally Posted by Duglas I typed "fdisk -l" and saw /dev/sda{1,2,3,4} (just what I expected) I typed "mount" and saw a bunch of file systems, /dev, /proc, /dev, ... etc I inserted a thumbdrive I typed "fdisk -l" and saw one (1) new device (/dev/sdb1) "/dev/sdb1 2144 62537727 62535584 29.8G b W95 FAT32" I typed "mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/" I now see the error msg, "column: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character" I typed "mount" and see exactly the same file systems as 5 lines above. Does this help?

No.

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=10240k,nr_inodes=480735,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=770404k,mode=755)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=23,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda4 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
/dev/sda3 on /mnt/backup type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
rpc_pipefs on /run/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=385204k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)

type is a command and not a request to write mount on the command line.

type mount

Expected output is
mount is /bin/mount
or
mount is aliased to ...

I haven't had to manually mount any drives for a long time since linux become so user-friendly with doing auto-mounts; but the last time I did a manual mount, I had to do the following:

su userwithadminprivileges
sudo mount ...

Mounting a device requires root privileges. I see no indication that the OP is trying to mount as root, but the way he posts, it's impossible to tell for sure. The error message makes no sense to me, I've never seen anything like that from a mount command. The usual error message for a non-privileged user is "mount: only root can do that". Is the OP using an English keyboard layout, or something else? The error message quoted seems to indicate that a nonstandard character is being passed in the command somehow.

Thanks for the responses.

I knew that "mount" is a command. I did not know that "type" is also a command.
the output of "type mount" is:
"mount is aliased to `mount | column -t'" without the double quotes.

I am a regular user, however I am also root on this machine. I have a line in /etc/fstab that give my user account the privilege to mount usb thumbdrives.
I have experimented with the instructions as both user and root (with no difference in result). I am using a US english keyboard.

I do NOT use Ubuntu, Gnome, or auto-mounting, for administration tasks use the command line (urxvt), and Openbox.

In the error msg I see the command "column" is complaining. In "type mount" I see that mount is piped to column.
So I tried this:
$ which mount
/bin/mount
$ /bin/mount /mnt/
(no error msg)
$ mount
...
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev... [last line]
$ cd /mnt
$ ls -l

Can anyone tell me what is the problem with "column"?

You have an unwanted alias, check out the .bashrc. You can still mount even with this alias in place if you use /bin/mount instead of plain mount.

oops Posted before filling in the output of "ls -l"
files, lots of files, Gb's of files.

This thread will be marked as "solved", but I would still like to know what happened to "column".

I suspect some locale setting was changed or not compatible when you installed jmtpfs. Not sure where to look at the moment.

Found it in .bash_aliases (sourced from .bashrc)
No idea where it came from.
Thank you again.