External USB icons on desktop

shivkiyer · 09-23-2009, 11:54 AM

I am using Ubuntu Hardy on a Dell Inspiron 1525. I have an external 500G harddisk that has 5 partitions (both ext3 and FAT32). I usually connect it and the icons appear on the desktop and I never mount it using the mount command. I was wondering if it was possible to automatically mount it to mount points like /mnt/software, /mnt/movies, /mnt/music, etc.

So from Nautilus I tried experimenting with one of the partitions (ext3, 195G, options: rw, nosuid, relatime, data=ordered). I did a right-click and then went to Properties. The last tab was Volume. Here it listed the volume mount point, filesystem type and options and there I entered new options particularly the mount point.

Now when I plug the drive in, the partition that I edited doesn't show up. When I click on it from Nautilus and try to mount it, it gives me an error:

Quote:

mount point cannot contain the following characters: newline, G_DIR_SEPARATOR (usually /)

I don't get any "Volume" options like I get with the other partitions. So I don't have a clue as to how to restore the original settings.

Can anyone tell me where and how can I get back my original partition settings?

Thanks in advance.

~sHyLoCk~ · 09-23-2009, 11:58 AM

Try specifying mount points in /etc/fstab

shivkiyer · 09-24-2009, 12:15 AM

Thanks for the response. Actually, I can still mount it from command prompt with mount command and so fstab will also work. But I would like the external USB disk to be used only when necessary and so it isn't plugged in always. When I plug it in the icons appear on the desktop. With the partition I fiddled with, the icon has disappeared and when I try to click on it through Nautilus it gives the error.

I wanted to know how to correct it in Nautilus and get my settings back. I was looking for any setup files (in .nautilus/ for example) in my home folder but couldn't find any. Any ideas on this?

~sHyLoCk~ · 09-24-2009, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shivkiyer

I wanted to know how to correct it in Nautilus and get my settings back. I was looking for any setup files (in .nautilus/ for example) in my home folder but couldn't find any. Any ideas on this?

Sorry /me is not a nome user. Anyway will deleting ~/.nautilus be a bad idea? I mean you could just move it to somewhere and see if the problem is resolved, else if things go wrong you can always move it back!
I'd say:

Code:

mv ~/.nautilus ~/nautilus

and then see.

shivkiyer · 09-24-2009, 10:03 AM

I tried moving the .nautilus folder. Didn't work. So I went hunting for the file that holds the key to my partition. I looked in .gconf/ in my home directory. Inside it there is:
system/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_volume_uuid_442847b8_aebf_4bc8_ae64_1f2430142a0d

Which has %gconf.xml with

Code:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
        <entry name="mount_options" mtime="1253723140" type="list" ltype="string">
                <li type="string">
                        <stringvalue>rw,</stringvalue>
                </li>
                <li type="string">
                        <stringvalue>nosuid,</stringvalue>
                </li>
                <li type="string">
                        <stringvalue>nodev,</stringvalue>
                </li>
                <li type="string">
                        <stringvalue>relatime,</stringvalue>
                </li>
                <li type="string">
                        <stringvalue>data=ordered</stringvalue>
                </li>
        </entry>
        <entry name="fstype_override" mtime="1253723072" type="string">
                <stringvalue>ext3</stringvalue>
        </entry>
        <entry name="mount_point" mtime="1253723068" type="string">
                <stringvalue>/dev/sdb2</stringvalue>
        </entry>
</gconf>

This is the change I made to the partition. I moved the volumes directory elsewhere and still no luck. Any ideas anyone?