USB Hard Drive still not working properly

[rothchild]

I had this problem with feisty too (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...al/+bug/102097) and thought I'd try Gutsy to see if it'd been fixed, it hasn't :-(

I'm not sure if it is the same as this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s....20/+bug/88746

I can manually mount the drive using pmount-hal /dev/sdb1 but it mounts read only and wont let me change the permissions despite belonging to my user and group.

It all worked fine under Dapper!

Uname -a
Linux ****-desktop 2.6.22-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Jul 12 15:59:45 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 38913 312568641 c W95 FAT32 (LBA

It's a seagate 320gb usb hard drive and if anyone has any tips about how I can get normal function back out of it I will be most grateful!

Cheers
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[disturbedite]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

i've had this type of problem for a while on gutsy too with a usb flash drive. if its in the usb port when i boot, i have write access (mounted as user) but if i stick it in after booting, not only does it mount some times, when it does mount it mounts as root (no write access) and doesn't even show up on the desktop!

i just do it all by command line for the time being, its easy anyway.

[rothchild]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

What do you do to get it to mount with write permissions?

From looking through some of the bug reports I'm getting concerned that something is seriously broken with USB in (k)ubuntu, I gotta say this is starting to get really annoying for me + Is the sort of things that will have newbie windows converts fleeing back whence they came!

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[dibl]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

What's the filesystem? If it's NTFS, then THAT'S the issue, not the USB interface.

[rothchild]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

nah it's FAT32, it worked properly before under dapper.

I've got stuff on it I want to keep and I need to be able to use it under windoze from time to time so I can't switch it to ext* (or can I?)

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[dibl]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

Well, then FAT32 should not be a problem.

Unicorn Rider has a technique he calls "pinning" the USB UUID number, so it doesn't change when you plug in thumb drives, webcams, sd cards, and whatnot (it's a dynamically assigned UUID otherwise). Probably if you search for it here, or else look on his web site you can find out how to set your external drive a "permanent" device ID.

[disturbedite]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

mine is fat32 & i always plug it in to the same usb 2.0 port. (its a usb 2.0 fd).

what i do is mount it (required to do as root) and copy/cut/past/move files as root. no problem when i go from linux to windows tho...

[penguin.ch]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

Please (with the usb device plugged in, of course ...) post the system's feedback to:

ls -l /media
more /etc/mtab | grep '^/dev/'

[rothchild]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

****@****-desktop:~$ ls -l /media
total 16
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2007-03-13 17:41 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-03-13 17:41 cdrom0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2007-03-13 17:41 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-03-13 17:41 floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-07-06 17:03 sdb1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-07-14 13:40 usbdisk

****@****-desktop:~$ more /etc/mtab | grep '^/dev/'
/dev/sda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/sda2 /home ext3 rw 0 0


in the ls -l output 'usbdisk' is the drive 'sdb1' I'm not sure where it came from, if I do pmount-hal /dev/sdb1 it puts it in 'usbdisk' and sdb1 is listed when I do ls -l /media without the drive switched on.

Also I've noticed (using the hal device manager) that hal is picking up the drive fine I can see 'seagate external drive' listed it's just that I am not getting the automount window popping up asking me what I want to do with the newly detected device.

also I tried sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk and the drive mounts ok but using konqueror with kdesu I still can't write to the drive?!

Cheers
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[disturbedite]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

well there is definitely a permissions or setup problem going on if you can't write as root. (with kdesu or otherwise).

[penguin.ch]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk

With this done, add the following, then try again:

sudo chmod 777 /media/usbdisk

From my experience, this is a useable work-around ...

A more permanent fix of this supposed bug would be:

http://www.penguin.ch/dokuwiki/doku....ab#usb_tacking

[rothchild]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

Ok so something must be wrong with my setup because I just tried chmod 777 it didn't give an error but i still can't write to the drive (even with kdesu konqueror)

I'm a bit stuck at this point, any thoughts?

Cheers
Child

[penguin.ch]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

Back to square one: "plug & mount" the usb disk / partition, then re-run ls -l /media and more /etc/mtab, respectively, and post the relevant excerpts from the system's feedback resulting therefrom.

[rothchild]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

Alright, actually a bit more info here as you can see I tried using chmod again and it spat an error this time

desktop:~$ ls -l /media

total 44
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 2007-03-13 17:41 cdrom -> cdrom0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-03-13 17:41 cdrom0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 2007-03-13 17:41 floppy -> floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-03-13 17:41 floppy0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-07-06 17:03 sdb1
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 32768 1970-01-01 01:00 usbdisk



-desktop:~$ sudo chmod 777 /media/usbdisk

chmod: changing permissions of `/media/usbdisk': Read-only file system


-desktop:~$ more /etc/mtab

/dev/sda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/sda2 /home ext3 rw 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
tmpfs /lib/modules/2.6.22-8-generic/volatile tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk vfat rw 0 0

But the last line here says 'rw' (read / write, no?)

appreciate you patience thanks UnicornRider
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[disturbedite]

Re: USB Hard Drive still not working properly

just thought i'd clarify something here, i'm not sure if its related to this, but, somewhat recently there was a change in the kernel. what it did was, change the ide drivers to sata drivers. (they're better, apparently). this screwed up a lot of stuff (mount points) for me as i have ide & sata drives. (it also messed up my usb fd's mount point(s)).
the effect was, as i put it, it played musical chairs with my mount points, and NOT just my fd's mount point.
as i said, i'm not sure if this is related to your problem, but just in case it is, i thought i'd post some background on it in case it would be relevant & helpful.