How to get Redhat to automount USB like Fedora

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 12:21 PM

On Fedora, when you insert a USB stick it automounts to some directory in /media.

We are using RHEL 5 as a desktop workstation and want the same behavior, but it doesn't appear to do this out of the box.

What needs to be done to get this to work?

Thanks

ThinkFree · 08-13-2009, 12:30 PM

Add this in /etc/fstab file

Quote:

/dev/sdb1 /media/usb/ auto defaults,auto,user 0 0

You need to create /media/usb directory first.

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThinkFree

Add this in /etc/fstab file
/dev/sdb1 /media/usb/ auto defaults,auto,user 0 0
You need to create /media/usb directory first.

I don't think Fedora does it that way. fstab will work, but you need to create entries for all ports, since one might insert two sticks, one in /dev/sdb1, and another in /dev/sdc1.
Isn't there a solution using dbus or udev or something?

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 04:36 PM

So the gnome people say make sure hald is running, ok I got that. Process 3114 is hald. Also hald-addon-storage is polling /dev/sdb which is where I am hotplugging my USB sticks.

Then, go into Preferences and select "Removable Drives and Media Preferences", so I do that, and I select to "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged". Check.

Then I hot plug a USB stick and voila, NOTHING HAPPENS.
So, what is wrong.
The problem with Linux is that there are 3 million ways to do everything and none of them work.

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nemesis9

So the gnome people say make sure hald is running, ok I got that. Process 3114 is hald. Also hald-addon-storage is polling /dev/sdb which is where I am hotplugging my USB sticks.

Then, go into Preferences and select "Removable Drives and Media Preferences", so I do that, and I select to "Mount removable drives when hot-plugged". Check.

Then I hot plug a USB stick and voila, NOTHING HAPPENS.
So, what is wrong.
The problem with Linux is that there are 3 million ways to do everything and none of them work.

Apparently some dbus policy is denying access, if I get this corrected I might get somewhere.

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nemesis9

Apparently some dbus policy is denying access, if I get this corrected I might get somewhere.

OK, so I edited /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf and set the default policy

<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>

It was set to "deny" before. Now it works like Fedora, except it doesn't launch Nautilus, which is good cuz I don't need Nautilus.

Thanks for your patience.

nemesis9 · 08-13-2009, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nemesis9

OK, so I edited /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf and set the default policy

<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>

It was set to "deny" before. Now it works like Fedora, except it doesn't launch Nautilus, which is good cuz I don't need Nautilus.

Thanks for your patience.

Ok, that's all fine and dandy, but now I would like this to work outside of any Window Manager. When I run the system from a console, there is no automounting taking place. How do I get that to work? In other words, what is the piece that Gnome is bringing to the table that is missing from the console?

nemesis9 · 08-14-2009, 03:18 PM

Don't what I did, but it seems to be working from the console as well