External NTFS USB drive automount

[Alexander Smirnov]

Stew Schneider wrote:
> Kubuntu Feisty. I've got a SimpleTech 80G USB drive formatted as NTFS 
> that won't automount. I'd like some suggestions.
>
> I followed the directions at 
> http://www.ubuntugeek.com/widows-ntfs-partitions-readwrite-support-made-easy-in-ubuntu-feisty.html 
> and installed ntfs-config. Running it from either Gnome or KDE skips the 
> "The following new partitions were detected and can be configured" 
> dialog and goes directly to the "Enable Write support" dialog. Of 
> course, with no mountpoint specified, no mounting gets done.
>
> If I manually alter fstab, I can mount it, but it is accessible only to 
> root, and read only. I can, however, copy the contents to my desktop as 
> root.
>
> Googling for an answer, I found:
>   
>> NTFS-config is a fat useless beast, which does a very simple thing and 
>> for that it needs to install a sheetload of gnome dependencies. Nobody 
>> needs it (not even Gnome users- only Ubuntu newbies may wrongly think 
>> they need it because it's "simple" and "idiotproof"), removable NTFS 
>> volumes can be initialized much easier:
>> CODE
>> sudo touch /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-ntfs-policy.fdi
>> sudo nano /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-ntfs-policy.fdi
>>
>>
>> Now copypaste to nano ( shift+insert) the following mumbojumbo:
>>
>> CODE
>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>> <!-- mount ntfs volume with the ntfs-3g driver to enable write support -->
>>     <device>
>>         <match key="volume.fstype" string="ntfs">
>>             <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.hotpluggable" 
>> bool="true">
>>                 <merge key="volume.fstype" type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
>>                 <merge key="volume.policy.mount_filesystem" 
>> type="string">ntfs-3g</merge>
>>                 <append key="volume.mount.valid_options" 
>> type="strlist">locale=</append>
>>             </match>
>>         </match>
>>     </device>
>> </deviceinfo>
>>
>>     
> I tried that, restarting hal with /etc/init.d/dbus restart, but the 
> result was the same -- the device won't automount.
>
> It is visible as /dev/sdb and fdisk indicates that it is HPFS/NTFS 
> formatted. A MacBook laying around here correctly mounts it as a NTFS 
> file system
>
> What am I missing?
>
> stew
>
>
>   
seems you are missing ntfs-3g driver which is referred in hal 
configuration file.
try
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g