[lucid] how to mount USB storage with correct permissions?

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Friday 29 October 2010, D. R. Evans wrote:
> My head just exploded...
> 
> Having been following the thread as best I can, and seeing what
> looks like conflicting information, I decided that the best thing
> to do was to re-set the entire thread by removing usbmount (since
> that advice came from
> http://newyork.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1470705&page=4,
> not from here) thus getting the system back to its original
> state, and then start all over again...
> 
> And of course, predictably, as soon as I removed usbmount
> magically the original problem (i.e., not receiving a
> notification when inserting USB drives) was gone.
> 
> And all the permissions are fine.
> 
> I have absolutely no idea how this can be. I guess I am glad that
> everything is now working, but I find the fragility that can lead
> to this sort of behaviour quite alarming.
> 
> Thank you everyone for the advice and help.

Actually, from what I read at http://usbmount.alioth.debian.org/, 
usbmount is likely what has been causing the particular issues you 
described. According to that page, the package is unmaintained. That 
would have been one heck of a good reason to not install it in the 
first place, btw.
If you want to do some good, you could open a bug report on launchpad 
and describe your problems, perhaps linking to this thread. With any 
luck, the package will then get thrown out of the repos, stopping 
unsuspecting users like yourself from being confused by its outdated 
behaviour.

BTW, some USB devices are just dodgy. I have an external hard drive 
that won't register properly when I plug it into my USB hub, but 
works fine when I connect it directly to the computer. Then again, it 
will register on the next boot/after I turn off power to it for a 
couple of hours. Should your USB device not show at some point in the 
future, you may try removing it, executing
"tail -f /var/log/messages" and plugging it in. If you see any errors 
being displayed relating to something to do with USB, you likely have 
such a dodgy device. Try using other USB ports, or - if that doesn't 
work - try again later.

  --Reinhold