USB thumb drive will not mount

[AuntieParticle]

I hope I'm posting this in the correct place.
I have just installed Kubuntu 11.04 amd 64 this afternoon and mostly everything is going well so far. But I cannot mount a USB thumb drive. I have tried a few different ones. The irony is that I installed from a thumb drive.

After putting in a USB thumb drive I see this error:

org.freedesktop.UDisks.Error.Failed: Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with: mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is already mounted on / mount failed

Is there some way to clear what Kubuntu thinks is mounted already so that my thumb drive will mount automatically?

[Teunis]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

The error message makes sense, sda1 is usually the drive where you have your / so something goes wrong.

Give it a try by booting up with the USB drive already inserted.

[AuntieParticle]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Thanks for your reply. I have tried your suggestion of booting up with the drive already inserted and I'm still receiving the same error.

It's been 8 or 9 years since I've used Linux and either a lot has changed or I have forgotten a lot, probably both Back then I was using Fedora. At any rate, I'm feeling a bit confused. Mostly the installation has gone well but this one issue is getting in the way of my being able to load personal files onto the newly Kubuntued laptop.

[AuntieParticle]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

I have discovered a sort of workaround. If I try to mount one USB thumb drive I will get the error but when I leave the first drive in and insert a second the second USB drive mounts without any problem. It doesn't seem to matter which drives are being used, it is always the first one that is inserted what will not mount. While this workaround does give me some functionality, I would still like to sort the problem out completely.

I don't know if this matters at all but I have a wireless mouse receiver in one of my USB ports all of the time. And I'm not certain if I mentioned this before but I have the installation on a HP dv9925nr Laptop.

[oshunluvr]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

I'm going to stick my neck out a bit here and say the mtab error is not the issue. The error is actually stating a correct response - You can't mount a USB stick as / unless you boot from it. Clearing mtab isn't the solution.

The problem seems to be that your system is mis-mounting (attempting to) the USB stick. This usually is caused by a bad line in your fstab.

Post /etc/fstab and lets have a look.

[AuntieParticle]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Okay, Here's the contents of my fstab. Thanks.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sdb1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sdb5 during installation
UUID=4bf0d058-7737-47cd-95a1-8b047302850c none swap sw 0 0

[dibl]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Okay, Here's the contents of my fstab. Thanks.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sdb1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sdb5 during installation
UUID=4bf0d058-7737-47cd-95a1-8b047302850c none swap sw 0 0

I think oshunluvr is right -- try changing that to /dev/sda1.

[wizard10000]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

I'd mount / by UUID instead of by device name - mounting by UUID is the default for *buntu.

Did you change it to /dev/sdb1?

[Teunis]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Yes this looks like a manual modification as normally the UUID is used.
But if this did happen during install I'm curious what caused it, one guess is there was already a disk mounted on sda what caused the install to use sdb...
Using the UUID would prevent such problems.

But I must say I still find the sd* approach easier

[wizard10000]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

But I must say I still find the sd* approach easier

I did too until I tried to mix ATA and SCSI drives in the same system and couldn't get them to enumerate consistently - they's swap themselves around depending on whether you warm- or cold-booted

[dibl]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

It's an easy mistake to make, when you're setting up the USB stick on your running system. It is probably /dev/sdb or higher as seen by your running system. You might forget that when it is trying to be the boot device, to the USB stick it is always /dev/sda.

BTW, if you want to see a scrambled mess of drives, here is my desktop system:

root@aptosidbox:/home/don# blkid -c /dev/null
/dev/sda: UUID="c112ed57-0e33-4d4b-82c9-5c55932c529d" UUID_SUB="549b488c-bad8-408c-9544-9c585411bef2" TYPE="btrfs" 
/dev/sdb: UUID="c112ed57-0e33-4d4b-82c9-5c55932c529d" UUID_SUB="e07bcc5b-1f36-4015-a648-b65aca6bf357" TYPE="btrfs" 
/dev/sdc1: UUID="97560dfe-7ae9-41fa-bc6b-fdf1aa5ec7c9" TYPE="ext2" 
/dev/sdc2: UUID="8d06b9f9-fea4-4c6b-9afe-022b9d55496b" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdd1: UUID="c70374e7-97b3-4972-a704-285e9343f776" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sdd2: UUID="8cee8dd4-94c1-4949-ae5e-5a7f065b0306" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sde1: LABEL="revodata" UUID="ec21f5b3-7fd4-4f4b-af8d-cf787b147ae8" TYPE="ext4"

What makes this one kinda of a PIA to boot is that the drives shown on this list as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb are SATA 3 drives on a Marvell SATA 3 controller that is a seperate controller from the SATA 2 controller. With my "/" partition on a PCI SSD, the BIOS on this motherboard does not retain the same device list across reboots (or randomly, it might), so the drive sequence in BIOS changes on me. 4 out of 5 boots require that I edit /etc/fstab and change the &$%# drive letters for these 2 drives, in order to mount them, because multi-drive btrfs requires conventional /dev/sdx devices to be specified for mounting. They hold data, not the system, so it's just a post-boot annoyance. And I was converting a directory full of images to a GIF animation earlier this week and ran my memory and swap out of space, so I converted a spare SSD partition into more swap space -- that's why there are 2 swaps.

[AuntieParticle]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

I think oshunluvr is right -- try changing that to /dev/sda1.

How do I edit the fstab? I assume I need to be root. How do I get root access in Kubuntu?

[dibl]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Alt-F2 "kdesudo kate /etc/fstab" with no quote marks.

You probably need to study up just a bit on the way root privileges are handled in the *buntus. What you knew about Fedora 8 years ago will not help you. #17 on the FAQs in my signature will get you started.

[AuntieParticle]

Re: USB thumb drive will not mount

Alt-F2 "kdesudo kate /etc/fstab" with no quote marks.

You probably need to study up just a bit on the way root privileges are handled in the *buntus. What you knew about Fedora 8 years ago will not help you. #17 on the FAQs in my signature will get you started.

Thank you! I ended up doing it in the terminal using vi Much more cumbersome but it got the job done. And your solution worked. I changed sdb1 to sda1 and it's ALIVE! My USB drives are mounting perfectly now.

I will definitely do some studying! Thanks again.