[SOLVED] WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

[danuntu]

I have a WD Passport USB drive that I've formatted to FAT32 with gparted from an on laptop. When I connected to my main desktop everything works fine.The drive is mounted and I'm able to write to it. When I connect it to my wife's laptop, it's mounted but I can't create folders nor write files to it....Why?
I'm using Kubuntu 10.04 on both my desktop and her laptop.

Thanks in advance.

[dibl]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

Unlike Americans, all USB ports were not created equal. :P

I believe the WD Passport is one of the models that gets its power from the USB port. In that case, you need a port that has enough power to run the drive. There are probably more than one USB port on your laptop. Try them all -- sometimes one is "special". If that doesn't work, try plugging your laptop in to wall power, and then try all the USB ports again.

[danuntu]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

well i tried that with no success. the drive shows under lsusb and mount.

lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 002: Id 1058:071a Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

mount:
/dev/sdb1 on /media/DRIVET type vfat (rw, nosuid,nodev,uhelper-hal,uid=1000,utf8,shortname=mixed,flush)

i just found on my desktop the mount info is different. but can u help me see if this is the cause.

mount:
/dev/sdj1 on /media/DRIVET type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000)

thnx

[skunk]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

I'm guessing that uid=1000 on your wifes machine does not correspond to the id of the currently logged on user

[danuntu]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

sorry skunk, that's not it. the uid on both machines are the same.

any other suggestions? it seems odd that it would work on one but not the other.

fyi ---- i just tried on another laptop with kubuntu 10.04. everything worked fine. could it be related to my computers being logged on as me and my wife's as her?

[Snowhog]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

could it be related to my computers being logged on as me and my wife's as her?

Well, if your wife is the one logged on, yes. The drive was set to be used by you, and you must be the user logged on.

[danuntu]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

ok. i can see that. but even if i used a gparted live cd to format the hd. is it because i first plugged it into my desktop after formatting. if so can i reformat it from her laptop. does that make sense?!?!

[skunk]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

Try changing the uid= parameter to mount

[danuntu]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

by "uid= parameter" do you mean in the mount point of the fstab

[skunk]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

I suspect that if you remove it completely (so that it uses the default value of uid=0) or explicitly set it to uid=0 on both machines it work just fine. If you are doing something fancy to enforce extra security, you will need to post the user and group ids of all users that you want to allow r/w access to the drive.

[danuntu]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

well, as usual, the solution is always right in my face. I went to the trouble of formatting the drive from my wife's laptop thinking the permissions or userid might be the problem. still, the create folder option was disabled. i thought surely i would not get it to work.
then by chance i tried copying just a single file to the drive. i expected it to say i didn't have permission. It worked. so i tried creating a folder. at first i couldn't. I restarted the laptop and now i have full access to it.
I remember reading reading something about having to do that. In either case, it worked, i'm happy cause she's happy. LOL

Thanks for the help.

danuntu

By the way, how do I set this topic to SOLVED?

[Snowhog]

Re: WD Passport works on one Kubuntu machine but not another...Why?

By the way, how do I set this topic to SOLVED?

Return to your original post in this thread, click the modify button. Add [SOLVED] to the subject.