USB drives not detected

[geezer]

Upgraded to Hardy Heron a few days ago.

Just plugged in a USB pen drive and waited for the system to pop open the mount dialog as it used to under 7.10.

NOTHING !!!!

It appears that Hardy Heron does not recognize when USB pen drives are hot plugged.

Is this a known bug/problem?

What am I missing

How could Hardy Heron get released with this deficiency?

[Qqmike]

Re: USB drives not detected

I've encountered the same.

Have you tried
K > System Settings
Advanced
Disk & Filesystems
Administrator Mode (lower right)
Highlight the USB drive partition
Modify
Mount point (e.g., if the device is /dev/sdc1, set the mount point as /media/sdc1)
Click so any user can do anything at any time.
Writable.
OK.
Come back out to Disk & Filesystems and click Enable
Quit
And see if it's somewhere (Desktop and/or in Konqueror -> Storage Media)
Worst case: find it and right-click and then Mount.

and so on ...

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

Yes - I found another thread from a few days back and tried all of that.

Created the mount point and everything.

Nothing happens. The system didn't want to accept the device at first, tried a few things and finally got that accepted.

Nothing shows up anywhere.

Does this mean that 8.04 no longer automatically detects pen drives when plugged??

Do I have to go through this procedure every time I hot plug the pen drive??

Does anybody know what happened that 8.04 doesn't automatically detect the pen drive??

7.10 had no problems at all with this.

[Qqmike]

Re: USB drives not detected

Well, I must say that, while doing lots of projects with flash drives, and now some in 8.04,I also encountered rather strange stuff in 8.04 (that's another subject).
What happens if you unplug the flash drive, wait 30 s, then plug it back in (after using Disk & Filesystems)?
Just curious, and just trying to help break it loose for you.
But I do agree, some stuff has slipped here in 8.04 vs 7.10 wrt USB. (I was even getting "Disk does not exist" when trying to open menu.lst on a flash drive! and repeatedly so... )

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

Well, I must say that, while doing lots of projects with flash drives, and now some in 8.04,I also encountered rather strange stuff in 8.04 (that's another subject).
What happens if you unplug the flash drive, wait 30 s, then plug it back in (after using Disk & Filesystems)?
Just curious, and just trying to help break it loose for you.
But I do agree, some stuff has slipped here in 8.04 vs 7.10 wrt USB. (I was even getting "Disk does not exist" when trying to open menu.lst on a flash drive! and repeatedly so... )

Sorry to be so long in getting back. Just logged back on.

Okay current status.

Booted and plugged in the USB pen drive. Nothing happens.

K->System Settings->disk&filesystems

The pen drive shows, but disabled.

Clicked administrator mode, higlighted the USB pen drive partition and clicked "enable". It is now enabled.

Looked in Konqueror under /media/RUNDISk and the contents are there.

Plugged in a second USB pen drive with the first still plugged in (I have lots and lots of USB slots and lots of USB pen drives - I use them as immediate backup for quickly changing data) and nothing happened.

Closed System Settings and re-opened to the Disks & Filesystems. The second pen drive is there, but with no place to mount.

CLICKED Administrator mode and created a new mount point, etc.

Clicked enable and it was mounted. Looked under Konqueror and the contents were there.

The problem is that under 8.04 I HAVE to go through the above procedure to mount the USB pen drives - EVERY single one of them.

Under 7.10, I simply plugged in the USB pen drive and waited a few seconds, the mount dialog popped up and click OK and that was it.

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

Okay tried the procedure of unplugging, waiting 30 seconds and plugging in again.

Nothing.

K->System Settings->Disk & Filesystems

It's there

clicked Administrator Mode - the "enable" button isn't available, olny the "new" button. Tried that to mount and it tells me that the mount point is being used already. So once it is mounted, I have to reboot Kubuntu to unmount and then remount the USB pen drive.

This is a REAL MESS

Is there any way to downgrade back to 7.10??

Are any of the USB developers watching any of this to see what is happening

Is this the permanent status of USB pen drives under Hardy Heron?

[Qqmike]

Re: USB drives not detected

Well, geezer, you're preaching to the choir here, as I have the same experience.
Sometimes I switch to Konsole and sudo umount /media/such_and_such or sudo mount. But, yes, same trip here.
Since my end goal is the experiment I'm doing (usually GRUB-related), I just keep going, but it is a time-consuming bump in the road each time.


<a bump for others to share experience and/or fixes>

[assettt]

Re: USB drives not detected

That is really strange because for me all my usb flash drives and external hard drive are detected and identified correctly. I get a pop-up on the 'recently plugged device' applet on the panel. The only issue i seem to have is windows partitions are only mounted after you give the root password.

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

It would be nice to know if the development people are watching or even aware of what is being reported here. I post for two reasons:

• see anybody has a solution to the problem
• let the people who can correct the code if that is necessary know about the problem

Or am I essentially wasting my time and effort "preaching to the choir"??

In looking through past posts, I noticed that essentially the same problem had been posted previously. No known solution was posted there, but some thing kinda, sorta works. A real kludge. That is what I have been going through so far.

No developer has posted saying that thanks we are now aware of the problem or thanks, we know about the problem and are working to solve. I used to post to bug lists, but stopped since the feedback was minimal to zero and NO solutions were ever offered.

I'm wondering if posting here is the same. Almost. The last time I got answers from very knowledgeable people, but I don't think they knew anymore about the actual code than I do or knew any of the developers any better than I do.

Thanks for letting me vent. Frustrating posting to a wall never knowing if the people that can provide the real solutions are really listening or not.

Just noticed the update icon and downloaded and installed the updates. One was an update to "mount" whatever that means. Hoping it has something to do with the USB pen drive mess. Hope springs eternal.

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

That is really strange because for me all my usb flash drives and external hard drive are detected and identified correctly. I get a pop-up on the 'recently plugged device' applet on the panel. The only issue i seem to have is windows partitions are only mounted after you give the root password.

Have you installed Hardy Heron, 8.04, and if so did you do a native install from a Live CD or upgrade from a previous release??

As for the Windows partitions, all of my Windows partitions are mounted and ready to go at boot time - no root password needed. Not too sure what you mean by "root password" though since under (K)Ubuntu there is no root. I assume you mean the user password.

Where do you get this "recently plugged device applet" on the panel. There is none on my system.

[dibl]

Re: USB drives not detected

My experience is like assettt's - no problems with the following:

- USB 8GB PNY thumb drive
- USB 4GB unknown brand thumb drive
- USB external CD/DVD drive
- USB Sandisk SD/SDHC card reader

Factoids that might or might not be relevant:

Thumb drives typically come formatted FAT16. But FAT16 filesystems can't be more than 4GB. I normally re-format immediately to FAT32 or even NTFS, to improve data security. BUT, going to NTFS means you HAVE to do a "Safely Remove" in Linux and/or an "Eject" in Windows, and give the OS a few seconds to "flush the cache" to the thumb drive, before you yank it.

I have also noticed that after a VMware Player/Win XP session in which a USB drive is used, it is not unusual that when the VMware window is closed, the USB device is not automatically re-detected by Kubuntu. However, if I remove the drive, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in, then it is detected and the offer to open it in Dolphin pops up.

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

I'm using 2 GB and 1GB pen drives. The 1 GB are memorex and the 2 GB are Micro Center no-name drives. Pre-formatted to whatever. Since they are all way under the 4 GB limit there should be no problem.

With the updated "mount" s/w the DVD drives now have what appear to be permanent icons on the desktop even with no media.

I can plug the pen drive in and again nothing happens.

If I start KdiskFree, the pen drive shows. If I right click and click to mount, then the drive shows on the Kdiskfree display in two places (as sdd1 and as sdi1 ?).

If I right click sdi1 and unmount, I get an error message that sdi1 is not in fstab and I am not root. If I right click the original sdd1 and unmount, then sdi1 disappears and sdd1 is zeroed out in storage free.

In order to mount more than 1 USB pen drive, I have to do some strange things in the "Disks & Filesystems" area in administrator mode. I haven't noticed if it is the same thing every time, but I am pretty sure it isn't.

As for the VMWare stuff - I don't use it. Tried once under 7.10, but it was getting more and more complicated and I getting to the point that I had to download yet another s/w package from them and then buy their s/w to create something that was runnable under the VMWare servor, that after a few hours I just gave it up as a lost cause. The review and How-To I read made it sound like a snap - a few minutes and everything would work. Didn't work like the review stated though. My physical disk setup made things far too complicated and I had installed Fedora 8 which royally screwed my XP installation so that only my Vista OS runs as far as windows is concerned now. After I found that the Fedora installation screwed my XP installation, I stopped using Fedora any more. and VMWare doesn't work with Vista like it does with XP and it expects everything to be on one disk and a simple partition setup, etc, etc, etc.

My experience is like assettt's - no problems with the following:

- USB 8GB PNY thumb drive
- USB 4GB unknown brand thumb drive
- USB external CD/DVD drive
- USB Sandisk SD/SDHC card reader

Factoids that might or might not be relevant:

Thumb drives typically come formatted FAT16. But FAT16 filesystems can't be more than 4GB. I normally re-format immediately to FAT32 or even NTFS, to improve data security. BUT, going to NTFS means you HAVE to do a "Safely Remove" in Linux and/or an "Eject" in Windows, and give the OS a few seconds to "flush the cache" to the thumb drive, before you yank it.

I have also noticed that after a VMware Player/Win XP session in which a USB drive is used, it is not unusual that when the VMware window is closed, the USB device is not automatically re-detected by Kubuntu. However, if I remove the drive, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in, then it is detected and the offer to open it in Dolphin pops up.

[dibl]

Re: USB drives not detected

If you can stand to do an experiment, take one of your pen drives, and format it FAT32 in a Windows system, and then use the "Eject" command on it from the right-click menu in the "My Computer" window, prior to removing it.

Then stick it in your Kubuntu system when it is running, and see if anything different happens.

Just in case there's some filesystem corruption going on --

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

If you can stand to do an experiment, take one of your pen drives, and format it FAT32 in a Windows system, and then use the "Eject" command on it from the right-click menu in the "My Computer" window, prior to removing it.

Then stick it in your Kubuntu system when it is running, and see if anything different happens.

Just in case there's some filesystem corruption going on --

Tried your suggestion. Didn't work.

Plugged in the newly formatted FAT32 USB pen drive. Booted Kdiskfree and it shows, but wouldn't mount.

K->System Settings->disk & Filesystems

Administrator mode

had to add a new mount point, then "enable"

Kdiskfree now unmounts, but then will not mount.

Unplugged and plugged in one of the USB pen Drives that would mount previously. Now none of the USB pen Drives will mount under Kdiskfree.

Is there any way to obtain a list of all packages on the system?

Maybe then I can boot the 7.10 Live CD and install fresh and just dump 8.04.

Maybe I'll download an 8.04 Live CD and install that. Any way during the installation to tell the GRUB installation to look for the current "menu.lst" file instead of the one that the LIve CD will install??

this upgraded 8.04 installation is driving me nuts with the USB Pen drives.

I wouldn't mind losing the pen drives, but Iuse them for immediate backup for critical data and losing the immediate backup support for critical data is not an option. Writing DVDs is far to time consuming and expensive to backup a few megabytes of data immediately. With the pn drives I simply have an "rm -f" in the appropriate scripts that get executed and the modified data is copied to the pen drives.

[geezer]

Re: USB drives not detected

ne thing I have noticed that seems to be pretty consistent: It is possible to ONLY ONE USB pen drive mounted at a time.

As soon as I try to mount a second with the first still mounted, an error report pops up that it doesn't exist.

Unmount the first and then none will mount anymore.