Howdy,
I'm new to this forum, and fairly new to linux, so I hope I ask my question correctly and with the right information.

Im having a small amount of trouble with a USB 2.0 flash drive with my Mandrake 10.

If I plug it in, and boot up, it is detected, it mounts and I can access the drive.
The problem is, the icon on the desktop does not give me the option to unmount the drive. Even when I 'umount /mnt/removable' and remove the drive and replug it, I cant get it working again. I have to reboot to make that happen.

I know I can hotplug things in my current system state as I can hotplug my camera and that gets detected and redetected.

I tried using Knoppix with the usb drive, and this automatically set up the drive to be unmountable. This works when I plug the usb drive back in and remount it. Under knoppix, the fstab line for the drive is:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=000,uid=knoppix,gid=knoppix 0 0


So I'm thinking the problem is either the modules I have installed, or something is set up strangely..

And now for some printouts....

under sda in Harddrake2:
New devfs device: /dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc
Old device file: /dev/sda
Floppy format: DCS SOLID GEAR -USB2
Media class: hd (Mass Storage|SCSI|Bulk (Zip))

that seems correct to me.


lsmod:
Module Size Used by
sg 38044 0
sr_mod 17028 0
radeon 127008 36
md5 3872 1
ipv6 232352 13
snd-seq-oss 31232 0
snd-seq-midi-event 7552 1 snd-seq-oss
snd-seq 51024 4 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq-midi-event
snd-pcm-oss 51812 0
snd-mixer-oss 17952 1 snd-pcm-oss
snd-via82xx 24128 1
snd-pcm 93156 2 snd-pcm-oss,snd-via82xx
snd-timer 24484 2 snd-seq,snd-pcm
snd-ac97-codec 58148 1 snd-via82xx
gameport 4480 1 snd-via82xx
snd-page-alloc 11972 2 snd-via82xx,snd-pcm
snd-mpu401-uart 7072 1 snd-via82xx
snd-rawmidi 23616 1 snd-mpu401-uart
snd-seq-device 8008 3 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq,snd-rawmidi
snd 52484 14 snd-seq-oss,snd-seq-midi-event,snd-seq,snd-pcm-oss,snd-mixer-oss,snd-via82xx,snd-pcm,snd-timer,snd-ac97-codec,snd-mpu401-uart,snd-rawmidi,snd-seq-device
soundcore 9248 1 snd
af_packet 20520 0
hid 53312 0
ide-floppy 18752 0
ide-tape 34864 0
ide-cd 40548 0
cdrom 37184 2 sr_mod,ide-cd
floppy 59444 0
8139too 23712 0
mii 4992 1 8139too
ohci1394 33956 0
ieee1394 287856 1 ohci1394
nls_cp850 4736 1
vfat 13760 1
fat 45120 1 vfat
usb-storage 72932 0
nls_iso8859-1 3904 2
ntfs 85932 1
supermount 37876 2
via-agp 7360 1
agpgart 31016 2 via-agp
ehci-hcd 24196 0
uhci-hcd 29104 0
usbcore 99132 6 hid,usb-storage,ehci-hcd,uhci-hcd
rtc 11576 0
ext3 110408 2
jbd 54328 1 ext3
sd_mod 16608 0
sata_via 4580 0
libata 38912 1 sata_via,[permanent]
scsi_mod 114008 5 sg,sr_mod,usb-storage,sd_mod,libata


and my fstab file:
/dev/hde6 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hde8 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdg /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hde1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
/dev/hde5 /mnt/win_d vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hde7 swap swap defaults 0 0

none /mnt/removable supermount dev=/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850 0 0


Id really appreciate some help on this issue.
I've looked around the forums for solutions, but I couldn't find much in the way of re-plugging a usb device, mostly just mounting it.

Cheers!

This looks like your flash drive. MDK has autmatically configured it for supermount which could be causing all the problems.

Try changing the fstab to
/dev/sda1 /mnt/removable ext2,vfat noauto,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850 0 0

Then create a link
ln -s dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1 might already exist.

Thanks for that,

I added that line to the fstab,
but when I rebooted, I found that the line(s) I removed originally:

none /mnt/removable2 supermount dev=/dev/scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850 0 0

was replaced. I noticed that when I booted, sometime during the startup messages, a dialog box comes up with Harddrake saying a device was added.

So again, I can get the drive to work under /mnt/removable2, but I cant umount, unplug and replug the drive...

Could I have a service running, or something else configured wrong outside of the fstab file?

Any suggestions?

xxx_Birdman_xxx - I am just starting to dig into getting my SanDisk compact flash reader working in Mandrake 10. Some of the things I'm observing may shed some light on what you're seeing?

If I have "hotplug" service running or started, I get multiple "removable" type directories that create/disappear on their own in /mnt. If I disable hotplug, I only get /mnt/removable created/removed as I plug/unplug my reader.

I've been successful at disabling hotplug, rebooting my system with no USB devices attached, then after full boot up and log in, I checked my /etc/fstab. It has no references to "/mnt/removable".

Then, I plug in my USB reader and recheck /etc/fstab. A line magically appears with "/dev/scsi/host3/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 /mnt/removable auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850,noauto,exec 0 0"

The reason this fstab entry "magically appears" (I'm guessing) is because devfsd is what is really controlling /dev/sda1 on MDK 10?

At any rate, once this line appears in /etc/fstab, I can then type "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/removable" and it mounts! But I can only access the mounted files as my root userid at this time... I'm still working on understanding that part.

So, in a nutshell, I can mount/unmount this device at will without rebooting the operating system and I only have one instance of /mnt/removable.

Coincidentally, no icons pop up on my desktop for "removable" and that's fine by me (for now). I can at least get to my cards data. Hopefully these ramblings help you figure out your card too!