USB drive and SD card mount failure.

[Rapael Morcha]

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 08:34:48PM -0600, Samuel Thurston, III wrote:
> No luck. See below:
> 
> On Nov 11, 2007 3:10 PM, Rapael Morcha <raphael.morcha at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 08:44:30AM -0600, Samuel Thurston, III wrote:
> > > Hiya,
> > >
> > > Since upgrading to 7.10, my USB drives and SD cards no longer automount.  On
> > > connect, i get the message:
> > >
> > > Cannot mount volume.
> > > Unable to mount the volume
> > > Details >>
> > > mount: wong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing
> > > codepage or helper progra, or other error.  In some cases useful info is
> > > found in syslog - try
> > > dmesg | tail or so
> > >
> > > So, dmesg says:
> > >
> > > [682445.710000] sdb: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
> > > [682445.710000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
> > > [682445.712000] SCSI device sdb: 1994385 512-byte hdwr sectors (1021 MB)
> > > [682445.713000] sdb: Write Protect is off
> > > [682445.713000] sdb: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
> > > [682445.713000] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
> > > [682445.713000]  sdb: sdb1
> > > [682445.717000] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
> > > [682445.717000] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
> > > [682445.992000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option "usefree" or missing value
> > >
> > >
> > > What seems to be the problem here, and how do i remedy it?  I can manually
> >
> > Your sdb1 partition seems to be recognised.Make sure you have hal and gnome-volume-manager installed.
> >
> > raphael at f9:[~] sudo apt-get install hal gnome-volume-manager;
> >
> 
> already had these installed
> 
> >
> > Try mounting now. If even after installing them, it doesn't like to mount, delete the option marked (1) (i.e., "usefree") below from your /etc/fstab file.
> >
> > raphael at f9:[~] sudo gedit /etc/fstab
> > <<<now delete the option "usefree">>>
> > for e.g., "/dev/sdb7 /mnt/veryphat vfat (1)<<usefree>>,defaults 0 0"
> 
> I don't have any entry like this.  all of my fstab entries are UUID=
> such and so forth.  do i need to add this? will it work as well for my
> SD slot if i do? if i have both connected i would think this would
> cause a problem.
> 

No you don't. UUID is another way by which Ubuntu organises your disk regardless of whether it's sda or sdb and so on.

So that means it should be something like this in /etc/fstab -
UUID=some-alphanumeric-number /mnt/veryphat vfat usefree,defaults, 0 0
Remove usefree if there is one. 

If there is none just try -
raphael at f9:[~] sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/veryphat

Replace 'sda1' above with your external disk partition number that can obtained from 'sudo fdisk -l'. For your SD card, it will most probably be vfat (fat32 partition).

Replace 'vfat' above with 'ntfs' if your external disk partition is ntfs. And also, don't forget to create /mnt/veryphat directory.
raphael at f9:[~] sudo mkdir /mnt/veryphat/; sudo chown -R you:your_group /mnt/veryphat/;
(Replace you with your username, your_group with the group in which you belong)

If all this sounds greek to you, http://www.arsgeek.com/?p=585.

Also, Google(tm)ing around helps a lot. :-)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mount+usb+disk+ubuntu
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mount+SD+ubuntu


Rationale - IMO, the 'usefree' option was added by Ubuntu kernel team to support some weird stuff and allow hal to work around at the same in kernel 2.6.22.*+ I believe your problem is the use of that option which is not working right for you. :) (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=usefree+ubuntu and http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/hal/2007-October/009806.html)

That's the rationale, but why it doesn't work, don't ask me. :-S


-- 
Cheers,
Raphael.