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**SheeEttin** · Apr 23, 2007, 08:37 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

First thing to do is edit /etc/fstab and change the last line to begin with /dev/fd0, rather than just /dev/.
That might (but probably won't) fix it, but after that I'm not sure what to do.

**luvallcomputers** · Apr 23, 2007, 06:57 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

Here two links that I used to mount my drive but did not help fix the ntfs files not showing up.
I too have reviewed the web with out much luck on finding fix for this problem. The drive works on windows box, and sabayon so why not feisty.

http://docs.cs.byu.edu/docs/mounting/2.php#1

http://www.smorgasbord.net/book/export/html/195

**SoulCrusher** · Apr 24, 2007, 09:27 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

Thank you SheeEttin and luvallcomputers for your replies...

**SheeEttin** · Apr 24, 2007, 09:38 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

You're welcome, but any luck?

**SoulCrusher** · Apr 24, 2007, 08:30 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

Uh - No. I put the drives on the back burner so to speak. I tried to install the nVidia drivers (the packaged drivers) but did something wrong. First time my answer was to just reinstall Feisty. Strange thing was, even after a "clean" reinstall I was limited to a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768, which, curiously, was the resolution I had set prior to the mishap. That seemed very odd to me since normally the clean install starts with a resolution of 1600 x 1200 and there is a full range of other choices in system settings. It was as though the installation did not overwrite everything but kept some, most, all of the files from the previous install. Suddenly I had only 3 possible resolutions. So I tried reconfiguring xserver using:

Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

but that resulted in a blank screen with a blinking cursor. I remembered ctrl+alt+F1 from one of the posts and tried that but I do not know what to do from there. I think one of the mistakes I made might have been allowing xserver to use a frame buffer - the message was about being unable to locate a frame buffer. Also, during the process of reconfiguring, I was unsure how to make selections - e.g. when the dialog asked me to choose all the resolutions I wanted to use I did not know how to apply the asterisk or any tick mark next to each resolution I wanted to select - and pressing enter just moved the dialog to the next screen.

Phew.

Anyway, I then got fed up - or rather more fed up because as it turned out the upgrade from Edgy did not work as well as I thought it had - no sound, no cd/dvd, no external drives. Opera broke. And that's only what I checked. So... the reinstall above was actually my second. First clean reinstall basically cleaned the mess up except my external drives still did not auto-mount.

I decided that getting the nVidia GLX drivers to work was going to be my first priority. But that didn't work. So I have set it aside for now and hope that some smoke clears and I find or can piece together the exact steps I need to take to get the GLX drivers working. I know there have been several posts on the subject ranging from "install the package and that's it" to more detailed scenarios to clean up failed attempts. What I would like to see are specific, detailed steps to get the nVidia-glx-new drivers working on a clean, fresh installation of Kubuntu - then I will deal with the other problems I find. And by specific, detailed steps I mean with now assumptions made - I don't know how or when to stop or restart xserver and I felt lost while trying to reconfigure it using the command above. I just want my nVidia GeForce FX 5200 video card to function at its full capabilities. It's the least I can do for it. ;-)

I'm going to rest for a while and take care of other business...

Thanks

**luvallcomputers** · Apr 24, 2007, 10:10 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

I took the usb hd to a windows box and found that I had to to take ownership of the files on the drive. I think at some point the sabayon that I was using changed the ownership and caused some of the problems. I did take ownership and copied the files to a different drive. I am now trying to format a old drive with ntfs on it to Linux. This might help me write files to the drive and have a nice backup.

**enchesss** · Apr 25, 2007, 07:45 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

there is a silly problem here becuase ntfs usb drives work properly on edgy ubuntu. No need to edit permission or anything.
Fiesty Kubuntu will not even allow permission to be edited see post on usb externl hd 1 day ago

**SheeEttin** · Apr 25, 2007, 08:43 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

If you're formatting and old drive, use FAT32. Both Windows and Linux can read-write FATs no problem.

And just so you know, to select resolutions, you use space.

**SoulCrusher** · Apr 25, 2007, 08:15 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

Ah, space! You see now? Maybe I missed something somewhere on the screen - like "Use the space key to make a selection". But seriously, where can I find information on that sort of thing? Is that (using the space key for that purpose) a standard method in that type of dialog?

Anyway.

FAT32. Naw. Had that. Hated it. Couldn't handle big files like Ghost images. I still use my windows machine so I will leave those drives as they are. If I had an another drive to play with I would just format it in Linux and use it for Linux. At this point, I'm kind of with enchess on this one. Something silly. The way I see it, I shouldn't have to do anything. They (the drives) should just work. But I understand that this is the "bleeding edge" Kubuntu version so maybe there are going to be problems like this. I also think that it shouldn't be difficult to get video drivers to work. And again, I don't think I should have to do anything to get them to work - unless it REALLY is as simple as installing the package and enabling the driver - but it hasn't proven to be that way at all. But that's fine. That's how I'll learn. I expected that. I just wanted to prepare myself for down the road for when I swear off Windows completely.

It's just frustrating. Edgy was much less of a problem. When I read that Fiesty was going to address some of the things in Edgy that really bothered me I was pretty excited about moving to it. But the upgrade trashed the system. Then the clean installs helped but not completely.

Alright. Enough whining. So - my system won't boot into Kubuntu. I assume it is xserver that is the problem. I can press ctrl+alt+F1 and get to a command line. What if I run the command to reconfigure xserver again. I think I'll try that. I now know how to make selections. Anything I don't understand I'll make the best guess I can and write it down. And just keep doing it until it works. Thanks for your input folks!

**json684** · Apr 25, 2007, 10:53 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

I am having the same problem. And hopefully can add a few details that are happening with me. So its a USB hard drive formatted with ntfs. It doesn't mount when I plug it in. I have installed ntfs-3g and ntfs-config. And ran ntfs-config and selected writing to external hard drives. The ntfs partition on my internal hard drive mounts great with read and write. I can mount the external drive with

pmount-hal /dev/sdb1

But this gives me read only. If I use konqueror and try to mount with the services tab i get

hal-storage-removable-mount-all-options refused uid 1000

in an error window. The window is titled kio_media_mounthelper. Also if I mount with

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk

it mounts but with only read access for root. With

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk

it mounts and I have read and write access for everyone. Finally if I take a look at /etc/mtab after mounting in the first case it has ntfs as the filesystem, and in the second case it has fuseblk as the filesystem. Likewise, if I use pmount-hal it is mounted as ntfs. If I try

pmount-hal /dev/sdb1 -t ntfs-3g

I get an error:

Error: invalid file system name 'ntfs-3g'

As a result I am thinking that there is something wrong with hal not using ntfs-3g or with pmount not using ntfs-3g. And finally if I open up kde-hal-device-manager and navigate to the drive I see that it is being reported as ntfs-3g. So I am now to the point that I am thinking pmount is messed up. Does KDE use pmount as its mounting tool for removable media?

Any other help would be very appreciated. I have done as much as I can.

**SheeEttin** · Apr 26, 2007, 07:54 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

pmount is "policy mount", the mounting tool for non-root users in general. It's used, for example (and this example is a bit out of date), for magnetic tapes. Nobody wants to have to call the sysadmin over to mount a tape, not even the sysadmin. pmount is quite less advanced than mount, it's just give it a device (and maybe a label), and it mounts it.

Try putting an entry in /etc/fstab for the drive. You'll want options like auto and rw.

**json684** · Apr 26, 2007, 12:06 PM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

I understand that I can add the drive to fstab. But the drive is also not generally connected when I boot up. And I do unplug it quite often to go places with my laptop. It seems that there should be some fix for the problem, not a way to avoid the conditions that cause the problems. I can get by for now mounting manually, but I am hoping that I can help to find the real problem. Thanks for the reply though.

**myxal** · May 19, 2007, 09:57 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

I'm having the very same problem - upon attaching external USB formatted NTFS and FAT32 (first and second primary partitions), only FAT32 is attached properly - NTFS partition seems to be ignored and isn't attached.

From what I read on forums (still a noob in Linux) I understand that pmount is used in kubuntu for automounting and is responsible for the mess we're all in. Played with it in konsole and found out that if I leave pmount to determine the filesystem, it doesn't even attempt to mount it with -t ntfs-3g. And as previously stated, with -t ntfs-3g as an argument to pmount, I get and 'unknown filesystem' error.
So my guess is that the automounter works fine, the ntfs-config utility did its job right and automounter issues pmount -t ntfs-3g... where pmount fails to mount the filesystem, and for some reason the generated error is not displayed.

Here's output from pmount -d /dev/sdc1 (-d for debug), when pmount tries to select the filesystem automatically, where you can see that mount -t ntfs-3g... is never attempted:

Code:

resolved /dev/sdc1 to device /dev/sdc1
mount point to be used: /media/sdc1
no iocharset given, current locale encoding is UTF-8
locale encoding uses UTF-8, setting iocharset to 'utf8'
Cleaning lock directory /var/lock/pmount_dev_sdc1
device_whitelist: checking /etc/pmount.allow...
device_whitlisted(): nothing matched, returning 0
find_sysfs_device: looking for sysfs directory for device 8:33
find_sysfs_device: checking whether /dev/sdc1 is on /sys/block/sdc (8:32)
find_sysfs_device: major device numbers match
find_sysfs_device: minor device numbers do not match, checking partitions...
find_sysfs_device: checking whether device /dev/sdc1 matches partition 8:32
find_sysfs_device: checking whether device /dev/sdc1 matches partition 8:34
find_sysfs_device: checking whether device /dev/sdc1 matches partition 8:33
find_sysfs_device: -> partition matches, belongs to block device /sys/block/sdc
device_removable: corresponding block device for /dev/sdc1 is /sys/block/sdc
get_blockdev_attr: value of /sys/block/sdc/removable == 0
find_bus_ancestry: device 2:0:0:0 (path /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.3/usb3/3-4/3-4:1.0/host2/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0, bus scsi) does not match, trying parent
find_bus_ancestry: device target2:0:0 (path /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.3/usb3/3-4/3-4:1.0/host2/target2:0:0, bus ) does not match, trying parent
find_bus_ancestry: device host2 (path /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.3/usb3/3-4/3-4:1.0/host2, bus ) does not match, trying parent
find_bus_ancestry: device 3-4:1.0 (path /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.3/usb3/3-4/3-4:1.0, bus usb) matches query, success
policy check passed
spawnv(): executing /sbin/cryptsetup '/sbin/cryptsetup' 'isLuks' '/dev/sdc1'
spawn(): /sbin/cryptsetup terminated with status 255
device is not LUKS encrypted, or cryptsetup with LUKS support is not installed
locking mount point directory
mount point directory locked
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'udf' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=000,iocharset=utf8' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'udf' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=000' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'iso9660' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,iocharset=utf8' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'iso9660' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'vfat' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,quiet,shortname=mixed,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'vfat' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,quiet,shortname=mixed,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 32
spawnv(): executing /bin/mount '/bin/mount' '-t' 'ntfs' '-o' 'nosuid,nodev,user,async,atime,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8' '/dev/sdc1' '/media/sdc1'
spawn(): /bin/mount terminated with status 0
unlocking mount point directory
mount point directory unlocked

The big question is 'why doesn't pmount in feisty work with ntfs-3g, when it (supposedly) worked in edgy?'

>

EDIT: Oh! So the bug seems to have been already filed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...unt/+bug/63271 Still, I am under the impression that fast bug-fixes are supposed the advantage of FOSS. WHAT GIVES!?

**SheeEttin** · May 19, 2007, 10:49 AM

Re: External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

It was filed as under the severity of "wishlist", so it's not high on their to-do list.

Feel free to compile pmount with this patch, though.
(Or, you could just add a line in your fstab for this drive. pmount checks it.)

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External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

External hard drives will not automount after upgrade to Feisty from Edgy

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