USB drives not showing up in Dolphin

[kayvee]

The problem I have is that when I plug in a USB drive Plasma does not indicate that a new USB device has been plugged in or show up as an unmounted drive in Dolphin. My dmesg shows that the drive has been recognized a drive sign such as sda, sdb, etc is assigned to it. But there is no number associated with it such as sda1 so I cannot even use mount, pmount, etc either. Mysteriously every once in a while it works as expected, though that is a rare situation. I have tried multiple different USB drives with FAT32, NTFS or EXT3 formatting without any clear theme. Actually even when it works on the rare occasion, there is no guarantee that the exact same drive would work as expected if I safely remove it and plug it back in. Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks!

[SecretCode]

So the drives always show in dmesg? And presumably once inserted they show in lsusb?

If you can get the same drive to work one time and not work another time, it would be useful to look at (and post) the last 20 or 30 lines of tail -n 30 /var/log/syslog

Do you have multiple USB sockets to try? It could be as simple as a loose connection or dust.

[kayvee]

Yes, it shows up in dmesg like this:

[30616.117931] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
[30616.212333] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0718
[30616.212339] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=2
[30616.212344] usb 1-1.4: Product: USB Storage
[30616.212347] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 000000000033
[30616.212984] usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[30616.214019] scsi host8: usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0
[30617.215046] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access     USB TO I DE/SATA Device   0041 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[30617.215552] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
[30617.218540] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
[30617.219627] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Asking for cache data failed
[30617.219633] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
[30617.225976] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Attached SCSI disk

And here's the lsusb output

vamsi@cistron:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 058f:6364 Alcor Micro Corp. AU6477 Card Reader Controller
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 17ef:602e Lenovo 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 05e3:0718 Genesys Logic, Inc. IDE/SATA Adapter
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 17ef:602d Lenovo 
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04e6:5116 SCM Microsystems, Inc. SCR331-LC1 / SCR3310 SmartCard Reader
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

This is the last bit from /var/log/syslog

Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.117931] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.212333] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=05e3, idProduct=0718
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.212339] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=2
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.212344] usb 1-1.4: Product: USB Storage
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.212347] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 000000000033
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.212984] usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron kernel: [30616.214019] scsi host8: usb-storage 1-1.4:1.0
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 6: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.4"
Dec 24 14:21:52 cistron mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 6 was not an MTP device
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.215046] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access     USB TO I DE/SATA Device   0041 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.215552] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg7 type 0
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.218540] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.219627] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Asking for cache data failed
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.219633] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Assuming drive cache: write through
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron kernel: [30617.225976] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdg] Attached SCSI disk
Dec 24 14:21:53 cistron systemd-udevd[11348]: Process '/usr/share/usbmount/usbmount add' failed with exit code 2.

I have tried all sockets there is no consistent behavior from any of the USB ports. They all work occasionally.

[kayvee]

From the /var/log/syslog, I see that

 Process '/usr/share/usbmount/usbmount add' failed with exit code 2.

But I am not sure what exit code 2 means and why it is having issues.

[oshunluvr]

Exit code 2 in this case likely means a missing keyword or function command. It can also mean a permission problem. For what it's worth /usr/share/usbmount/usbmount doesn't exist on my system (15.04 or 15.10) and udisksd does the mounting here using 15.04. It could be something is calling usbmount and you don't have it. You might want to install (or uninstall if they're already there) the usbmount and pmount packages and see if the problem goes away.

Otherwise, my first suspicion is your thumb drive isn't properly formatted or you'd see the sdg1 partition in the dmesg output, but if the same thumb drive works some of the time, maybe not.

First, unplug all external devices and make sure that /media/ doesn't have any subdirectories in it except one with your name and the permissions are correct:

drwxr-x---+

Then, take a blank thumb drive, insert it and format it ext2:

sudo mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdg

Obviously, make sure it's still /dev/sdg by looking at dmesg after inserting it. Once it's formatted, it should appear in the device notifier and be mountable. Mount it, unmount it, pull it out and put it back, etc., and repeat until you're satisfied it works properly or doesn't.

If it works correctly after this, then I'd suspect the formatting of the drives is hinky. Could be from NTFS or FAT and being improperly removed from a windows machine or some other reason. Try reformatting the same drive again using NTFS and seeing if that makes it fail.

If it still fails after doing this, then try and capture output from syslog and dmesg for both when it works and when it doesn't so we can compare.