USB Drive

Dr3n · 03-07-2005, 02:44 PM

Hi all.

I got my USB thumb drive mounted, with much reading and searching on the web. I'm running Debian Sarge, Gnome 2.8 and the default 2.4 kernel.

I rebooted the machine with the drive plugged in, then went:
# mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt/usb
This worked, and /mnt/usb has my files visable. The problem is though, that Gnome/Nautalis doesn't display my files / doesn't read my USB drive properly. All the files and directories are displayed as the "unknown" file icon.

Is there a way to fix this? Should I just format the drive, and with which file system?

Thanks.

mjrich · 03-07-2005, 03:08 PM

So you can still read/write/copy etc. each file on the usb drive?

Sounds more like a mime type/file icon issue. You may need to go into the Nautilous options and set which icons you wish to see for each file type. If there was a problem, you probably wouldn't see anything at all under any file manager...

Cheers,

mj

Dr3n · 03-07-2005, 04:02 PM

No, I can't read/write/copy anything.

And no, it's not an MIME type issue. Take a look at this screenshot:

http://dren.homelinux.org/img/usb.png

This shows my home dir with some files in it, and everything looks OK. In the other window labeled "/mnt/usb", this shows the files, and directories, on the usb drive.

This is as far as I've ever gotten with mounting my usb drive under Gnome. For some reason it works under KDE, but I don't use KDE.

mjrich · 03-07-2005, 04:41 PM

Odd. What happens when you attempt to copy the files using the shell, eg. (after mounting)

Code:

cd /mnt/usb
cp *.doc /home/vinkles

Cheers,

mj

Dr3n · 03-07-2005, 04:54 PM

Interesting. When I copy the files to ~ they turn out fine. Meaning, I can open them and read, etc. When I copied a directory over, the contents copied fine, but the files within the directory were still the "unknown" file type.

One other note: when I right click one of the "unknown" files, the file disappears. I can hit refresh and the file will reappear.

I wonder if it is the current file system on the drive? Or the drive model?

mjrich · 03-07-2005, 05:49 PM

Quote:

I wonder if it is the current file system on the drive? Or the drive model?

Could be. It might be worth formatting the usbdrive (under linux, not windows) just in case - vfat is usually a safe filesystem for usbdrives. Other than that, I would probably run an update on your gnome/nautilus packages, in case it is simply a bug that's since been fixed.

Cheers,

mj

Dr3n · 03-14-2005, 06:00 PM

Found the problem. It turns out that the USB cord I was using from the USB drive into the USB port somehow does not work with Linux. This cord isn't the default that came with the drive, so I came up with the zaney idea to try the default cord. BAM - Instaltely the USB icon came up on my desktop and Nautilus opens to the drive with my files and directories all intact - and with the correct MIME type icons.