Mount USB drive problems on server

[Anthony Yarusso]

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Peter Garrett wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:29:08 -0500
> Anthony Yarusso <tonyyarusso at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>> I have a USB external hard drive (WD Passport) that automatically mounts
>> on my laptop (Edgy) at /media/usbdrive and opens up Nautilus at that
>> location in Gnome.  However, plugging it into my desktop, server-install
>> machine (Dapper, X-less), no such mounting occurs, and I can't figure
>> out how to make it mount.  /dev did have an hdc in it that may have been
>> related, but that had not partitions (ie no hdc1), and I couldn't manage
>> to do anything with that.  Ideas?
> 
> Before you plug it in, run
> 
> tail -f /var/log/syslog 
> 
> and watch what output appears 

Nov 15 01:37:28 duluth kernel: [43477238.610000] usb 4-6: new high speed
USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8

That's the only line I get, nothing about a /dev entry or anything like
that.

- -  and/or after
> plugging it in run
> 
> dmesg | tail
> 
> amongst the output of the above commands you should see a line pointing
> ( most likely ) to /dev/sda1 - assuming it is the only usb device plugged
> in. If it is the second or third, you might see /dev/sda2 or /dev/sda3 and
> so on ... Example from output ( snipped)
> 
> Nov 15 17:26:58 localhost kernel: [17822800.520000] sda: assuming drive
> cache: write through Nov 15 17:26:58 localhost kernel: [17822800.520000]
> sda: sda1
> 
> 
> You can then mount this conventionally using for instance
> 
> sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /your/chosen/mountpoint 
> 
>  (assuming the usb
> device uses fat32 file system )
> 
> where "/your/chosen/mountpoint" refers to a an existing directory, of
> course ( for instance, as a test you can just mount it on /mnt )
> 
> A better way involves using the pmount utility, which is available in the
> repositories, if you don't have it installed already. From apt-cache show
> pmount:
> 
> " pmount is a wrapper around the standard mount program which permits
> normal users to mount removable devices without a matching /etc/fstab
> entry. "
> 
> Note that using a conventional /etc/fstab entry for /dev/sda1 to help with
> mounting will only work if the system happens to assign /dev/sda1 for your
> device - /dev is no longer static, so the device assignment will depend on
> the order in which devices are plugged in. You can write your own udev
> rules to work around this if you wish, but that's a whole subject in
> itself:
> 
> http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
> 
> 
> Peter
> 

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