HI all,

I installed Ubuntu this past summer, played with it for a while, and decided that I'd like to give Slackware a try. My previous experience with Linux is nil.

Last month I got Slackware 11 installed, with a default install, using the 2.4 kernel. It went very well. I was able to configure X for my video chipset and ALSA is working for sound.

So far, so good. I've even been able to install a few pieces of software that I had before: Open Office and Scummvm (for games).

The problem is that there are a few things that I used to be able to do with Ubuntu that I can't (yet) with slackware.

1) Mount my USB flash drive
2) Mount my digital camera so I can retrieve the photos
3) Mount anything as an unprivilaged user
4) Mount my DVD ROM at all
5) Play WMV files

I've found posts on this board that may help me with 1 (edit fstab), 2 (straighten out groups and permissions for my non-root user), and maybe 4 (more with fstab).

But my first question is this: should I upgrade to the 2.6 kernel? That's what Ubuntu 6.10 had and I could do those things above. From what I've read, upgrading to the 2.6 kernel is a bit of a pain for newbies like me.

To put it another way, will the 2.4 kernel allow me to mount my DVD, flash drive, and digital camera?

Thanks in advance,

-Drew

You should be able to mount any device you want, with whatever permissions you choose, with either 2.4 or 2.6 kernels. For 2.6, you'll be using udev, instead of manually setting permissions in the /dev directory and fstab. If there are other things you need from 2.6, go there first and then work on the device permissions. Otherwise, post the errors you're getting, the permissions set and the contents of your fstab file.

As for wmv video, make sure you have Xine installed, them copy the codecs to the directory Xine expects them to be. You can get the codecs from the MPlayer site.

If you're running a desktop configuration and not using a 2.6 kernel, you're crazy. There have been so many improvements since 2.4 it's almost like a different system. USB, CD, and device support are much better (though much has been backported, to be fair). udev alone makes upgrading all worthwhile, in my opinion.

I think the only good reasons to use 2.4 now are if you have a single-purpose device like a server that only needs a stable platform, or a small, hand-held type of device that needs a light, stripped down kernel and OS. Everything else should be 2.6.

BTW, even though you mention 5 things, the first 4 of them can all be solved with the mount command and proper fstab options, so they really should be considered only one.

And as for #5, install mplayer and the win32codecs.

Thanks, guys.

I'm at work right now, but I'll post my fstab later this evening.

Regards,

Okay, folks,

Here is my fstab:

I notice that DVD is not even listed.

How can I edit this to take care of the problems I mentioned in my first post?

Thanks,

-Drew

Here's my fstab info (key difference is allowing user access vs. owner):

Perms on the device in /dev (not recommended, but I'm the only user and it's a laptop):

As far as mounting the digital camera is concerned; some cameras can be treated as usb mounted drives but for others such as Canon you will need to install a program like digikam with the gphoto2 libraries.

I have a question based on what I have read here. My fstab contain entries like

/dev/cruzer1 /media/cruzer vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0

which are a hangover from before I used udev and I had lines like

/dev/sda3 /media/sda3 vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0

and which I use in combination with rules in udev to mount my usb drives.

SUBSYSTEM=="block", SYSFS{model}=="Cruzer Mini*", NAME+="cruzer1"


Do I not need these entries in fstab now?

Hi folks,

Thanks for the additional information. Here are a few more questions:

1) What does the "noauto" mean?

2) Do I still need to add my unpriviledged self to the CDROM and other groups?

I just reread the "mail" from Pat Volkerding that I got when I installed. He mentions having to run a scan command of some sort if one uses USB drives. I'm going to give that a shot and see what it does to my fstab.

I'd like my camera to be treated as a USB drive. I think that's what happened when I used Ubuntu, but digikam looks good too.

Thanks again,

-Drew

I'll describe to you how I set up my usb drives.

I have two flash memory sticks, mp3player, external usb hard disc and a digital radio with memory card in. The same approach works for all.

So I pugged my cruzer flash disc into the port. Opened a console and typed dmesg.

At the end of the printout it had something like.

USB Mass Storage device found at 2
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
SCSI device sdc: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
sdc: sdc1

So I know that the drive is seen as sdc1

I made a directory /media/cruzer

added the following to fstab
/dev/cruzer1 /media/cruzer vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0

Then at the console ran

udevinfo -p /sys/block/sdc/sdc1 -a

This gives a long output. I am not at my homePc now so cannot show it to you but it looks something like


'/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-1':
BUS="usb"
ID="1-1"
SYSFS{bConfigurationValue}="1"
SYSFS{bDeviceClass}="00"
SYSFS{bDeviceProtocol}="00"
SYSFS{bDeviceSubClass}="00"
SYSFS{bMaxPower}=" 84mA"
SYSFS{bNumConfigurations}="1"
SYSFS{bNumInterfaces}=" 1"
SYSFS{bcdDevice}="0100"
SYSFS{bmAttributes}="80"
SYSFS{detach_state}="0"
SYSFS{devnum}="2"
SYSFS{idProduct}="0117"
SYSFS{idVendor}="0117"
SYSFS{manufacturer}="Power by USB"
SYSFS{maxchild}="0"
SYSFS{model}="Cruzer Mini*"
SYSFS{product}="USB 2.0 Flash Drive "
SYSFS{serial}="A083014282978"
SYSFS{speed}="480"
SYSFS{version}=" 2.00"

I used this information to write a rule


SUBSYSTEM=="block", SYSFS{model}=="Cruzer Mini*", NAME+="cruzer"

which I saved as a file as

/etc/udev/rules.d/10-udev.rules

I did the same for my various devices and ended up with entries in fstab like this

/dev/cruzer /media/cruzer vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0
/dev/univadis /media/univadis vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0
/dev/external /media/external vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0
/dev/evoke /media/evoke vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0

and a rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-udev.rules

for each and a directory in /media for each.

Now to mount the device all I have to do is plug in and mount using konqueror under media, the command line or my favourite file manager which is worker.

I ought to stress that I am running a 2.6 kernel. I am not sure if this all woks with 2.4 but I have generally found usb drives much more reliably handled in 2.6. Upgrading to 2.6 is very easy and just a matther of installing the packages in installation cd

Alan

Here's a bit more info. The 'noauto' option in fstab means the device isn't mounted automatically at startup (as opposed to 'auto'). If you change the 'owner' option to 'user', you should be able to mount the device as ordinary user. As far as your dvd drive, you have to add that to fstab yourself, possibly with the same options as your cdrom. /dev/dvd and /mnt/dvd should already exist. You might need to create some symlinks such as linking /dev/dvd to /dev/hdc or wherever it actually is.

Digital camera. The easiest way I have found is to install libgphoto and gphoto2 (which you can get from linuxpackages.net). On the gphoto2 website it explains how to set it up so that an ordinary user can use it. This is a command line utility, but a simple 'gphoto2 -P' will get all the photos off your camera and dump them in the current directory.

Alan,

Does your solution require that I have the 2.6 kernel and udev running?

Question for all: I've installed the 2.4 kernel. Can I upgrade just the kernel without reinstalling all of the Slackware distribution? I think I can, but my lack of experience with Linux makes it hard for me to fully understand the process.

Thanks in advance,

-Drew

udev is a 2.6.x kernel thing.

If you can't mount stuff under 2.4, it's not likely to magically work with 2.6.

Yes, you can upgrade to 2.6 without reinstalling. There are several threads in this forum dating back to the 11.0 release that discuss the how part in detail.

No magic bullets, then. :-D

I edited the fstab file and am now able to mount the USB drive as an unprivileged user. I still haven't figured out the DVD ROM drive, but it's getting late, so I'll take what I can get for tonight.

Here is my fstab as it stands now:

When I try to mount the DVD, it actually mounts the CD.

So I still need to try the digital camera, and I still need to mount the DVD.

Thanks for the help so far, everyone.

Regards,

-Drew

Okay, that means the /dev/dvd link is pointing to the wrong device. Since you aren't using udev, it should be just a rm and ln -s.