[SOLVED] How r/w mount external USB with NTFS automatically within GNOME on CentOS 5.6

PatDB · 04-09-2011, 07:14 AM

Hello everyone,

I would like to mount an external USB drive containing a NTFS filesystem automatically within GNOME as soon as I plug the drive into the computer.

I have the following system:

Code:

rpm -q centos-release
centos-release-5-6.el5.centos.1

uname -a
Linux pat 2.6.18-238.5.1.el5.centos.plus #1 SMP Mon Apr 4 18:19:56 EDT 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I installed ntfs-3g and can manually read/write mount the drive using:

Code:

mount /dev/sdb1 /media/MyUSBDrive
mount
/dev/sdb1 on /media/MyUSBDrive type fuseblk (rw,allow_other,blksize=4096)
touch /media/MyUSBDrive/testfile01.txt

If I run GNOME and plug in the drive then some automount procedure mounts the drive. However I can only read and cannot write as "normal" user:

Code:

touch /media/MyUSBDrive/testfile02.txt
touch: cannot touch „/media/MyUSBDrive/testfile02.txt“: Permission denied

Root can do it:

Code:

sudo touch /media/MyUSBDrive/testfile02.txt

Is there any way how I can set the automount procedure within GNOME so that it automatically mounts the drive rw for "normal" users?

I do not want a fixed destination mount point, that is I do not want to enter something like:

Code:

/dev/sdb1  /media/MyUSBDrive  ntfs-3g  rw,umask=0000,defaults 0 0

into /etc/fstab as I want to be able to plug in several USB drives named after their filesystem label (I want for example /media/PatsDrive /media/MyUSBDrive /media/SomeOtherDrive ...).

Can anyone help me? Thank you!

Pat

bluebox · 04-09-2011, 09:22 AM

I suppose it's not gnome that auto-mounts your drive but "udev". Gnome just gets notified about your (new) drive and reacts.

udev is powerful enough to use custom moutpoints and custom access rights. The drawback is that most likely you'll have to write some custom udev rules by hand.

PatDB · 04-09-2011, 11:56 AM

Thank you for your answer. The hint with "udev" helped so that I could find the solution (see http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5/#post4277867)

I had to create the file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/20-ntfs-3g-policy.fdi with the following content:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="volume.fstype" string="ntfs">
      <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.hotpluggable" bool="true">
        <merge key="volume.fstype" type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
        <merge key="volume.policy.mount_filesystem" type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
        <merge key="storage.policy.should_mount" type="bool">true</merge>
        <append key="volume.mount.valid_options" type="strlist">locale=</append>
        <append key="volume.mount.valid_options" type="strlist">exec</append>
      </match>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

It seems to me as if udev did not use the ntfs-3g driver previously.