LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] USB Disk Mount oddness Slackware-14.0

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USB Disk Mount oddness Slackware-14.0

I have 2 usb disks in /etc/fstab with the user option, so I can mount them as user

Code:

/dev/sdb1        /mnt/zip          auto        noatime,diratime,user    0  0

/dev/sdc1        /mnt/hd          auto              noatime,diratime,user    0  0

If I plug one in, and try as user to mount it, it's not seen. I have to run 'fdisk -l' as root, and then the system sees it. WM is XFCE. What's the deal? It will remount, however. There will be a quick lazy tweak out there somewhere to fix this nonsense, and I'd love to hear it.

Even dmesg |tail doesn't show the complete dialog. (Dmesg has to be sudo dmesg - who got all paranoid over in slackware ?:). It stops short of announcing the partitions, so the partitions 'don't exist' until I run the fdisk. Of course, XFCE's automounter is also snagged in permissions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 4875262)

... and try as user to mount it, it's not seen. ...

Could you retell this in plain text, i.e. something like this:

I issued the command "mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt", and got a message "mount: only root can do that"

I'd try to add the noauto option. Also look at dmesg's output when you plug in the usb disk.

Thanks for the reply, and Didier for the 'noauto' idea - that's going in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by guanx (Post 4875470)

Could you retell this in plain text, i.e. something like this:

I issued the command "mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt", and got a message "mount: only root can do that"

Explaining anything in simple English is usually beyond me. Great minds run in great circles :-)
The error is/was

Code:

special device /dev/sdc1 does not exist

fdisk -l as root finds it, the partition table is read; I can mount it thereafter

Despite a reboot, the same thing isn't happening today, and my hardware is flaky, so I'll mark this solved without solving it. The USB port on my camera is knackered; I have 2xSD-->micro sd adapters, and one of them is disassembling itself:-/. It throws out a $2 sd card reader 100% of the time, though it's happy with it other days. It continually recognizes my usb key - it seems to have taken note of it somewhere. When/if I get the problem back the problem, and believe in my hardware, I'll start a new thread.

As you have two usb devices, the first one which is plugged in after booting gets the hdb1 interface name, whatever it be.

To avoid that, simply name them in /etc/fstab by their UUID (which will never change as it is an attribute of the physical device) not by the interface name in use at a point of time.

For that, plug one of them in, type "blkid" as root, and use the info given to feed a line for that device in /etc/fstab.

Here is an example:

Code:

su

/dev/sda1: LABEL="RM-CM-)servM-CM-) au systM-CM-(me" UUID="9A185F24185EFF27" TYPE="ntfs" 

/dev/sda2: UUID="78D46329D462E938" TYPE="ntfs" 

/dev/sda3: UUID="56d1b80a-c999-496a-b906-a13221e7890e" TYPE="ext4" 

/dev/sda5: UUID="4b7861c6-bcc7-4ba0-931b-d0f4597e52dd" TYPE="ext4" 

/dev/sda6: UUID="be30390a-f2d5-4fdc-96db-94c2b70e4955" TYPE="swap" 

/dev/sdb1: UUID="cd2b0100-ec15-483e-9016-2b192d8d126a" TYPE="vfat"

Here let's say the last line if for a partition in an USB key, I would append following line for it /etc/fstab:

Code:

UUID=cd2b0100-ec15-483e-9016-2b192d8d126a /mnt/usbkey vfat noauto,user 0 0

Thanks Didier, but I have a personal loathing for uuids. Purely personal - I don't ask anyone else to loathe them. And with the exception of my usb key, there's a pile of usb disks get plugged in from time to tme - GPS, son's gear, phone, sd card reader, etc. The medium term cure is to set up automount in XFCE, but it's a permissions hack and I have to web search it each time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 4875932)

(1) if you don't like uuids, you could use labels instead -- just kidding, I assume that you loathe labels as well :^)
(2) I just launched XFCE for the first time ever in Slackware-14.0 (I'm a fluxboxer) and didn't have to set up anything to get automount of an USB HD (two partitions) plus an USB key. i just had to right click on the icon displayed for each partition and choose "open".

Code:

bash-4.2$ cat /proc/partitions

major minor  #blocks  name



  8        0  156290904 sda

  8        1    102400 sda1

  8        2  36467712 sda2

  8        3  97281607 sda3

  8        4          1 sda4

  8        5  18239488 sda5

  8        6    4192933 sda6

  11        0    1048575 sr0

  8      16  976759808 sdb

  8      17  911467590 sdb1

  8      18  28107776 sdb2

  8      19    3144704 sdb3

  8      20  34037760 sdb4

  8      32    126464 sdc

  8      33    126433 sdc1

bash-4.2$ df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda3        92G  55G  32G  64% /

/dev/sda5        18G  9,2G  7,2G  57% /current

tmpfs          1,5G    0  1,5G  0% /dev/shm

/dev/sda2        35G  30G  5,3G  85% /windows

/dev/sdc1      122M  43M  80M  35% /run/media/didier/USBSLACKINS

/dev/sdb4        33G  30G  2,8G  92% /run/media/didier/05CA0CD90B63ADB5

/dev/sdb2        27G  6,9G  19G  28% /run/media/didier/0c698508-4662-4d53-b18f-064aa97d1301

/dev/sda1      100M  25M  76M  25% /run/media/didier/Réservé au système

bash-4.2$

PS But please note that I have no entries in /etc/fstab for sdb2, sdb4 and sdc1.
Amazingly /dev/sdb1 which has one is not auto mounted.
So I guess that for XFCE to automount your partitions you should remove corresponding lines in /etc/fstab.
Maybe there is a setting you can use in XFCE to choose yourself the mount points - but hey, I guess that in that case you would need to identify the partitions either by UUID or by LABEL. Oh, well...

Oh, and /dev/sdb3 is a swap partition, so it's pretty normal that it be not mounted.

It works here too - I have been using XFCE for 2-3 releases, but I don't know it yet. I never gave it any time. It works once as you said off the desktop; Thunar(file manager - I've learned that much) hasn't a clue about it, and if I unmount it, the icon vanishes :-/. Then pull it and push it back somewhere else, and thunar automounts it :-///.

/retires to a home for the bewildered :-)