Can't mount USB drive in FC14

[pennconservativ]

Whenever I insert a USB drive (or plug in my Motorola Droid to copy files to it), a window pops up that says 'Unable to Mount File System'

Not Authorized.

Does anyone know what would cause this? The drive shows up under the Places menu, but if I click on it I just keep getting the same error.

[manhh]

ntfs?

yum install ntfs-3g

[pennconservativ]

Originally Posted by manhh

ntfs?

yum install ntfs-3g

The drive that I'm currently trying to mount is a Motorola Droid. It mounted with no problems under Ubuntu.

---------- Post added at 09:02 PM GMT ---------- Previous post was at 08:36 PM GMT ----------

Rebooted the computer and now it's working...

[martinellison]

Same problem, with a memory stick. May also be happening with my scanner (Brother MFC-240)

[mwesten]

Are you guys using suspend? If so, it could be this issue https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=643367.
Mounting a flash drive fails for me because of it http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=253221.

[martinellison]

Originally Posted by mwesten

Are you guys using suspend? .

Yes, and I have

active = FALSE

from ck-list-sessions.

and switching TTY (Ctrl-Alt-F2, Ctrl-Alt-F1) fixed the scanner as well

[jcrowley3]

Same problem here. New install of Fedora 14, all updates applied. No 'suspend' involved -- new login.

From a terminal window, if you 'su' to 'root', then:

mkdir /mnt/usb
fdisk -lu
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

DOES mount the device, can 'cd' into directories, 'ls' to list files, 'cat' the files -- all OK -- so the device itself is fine.

But from a regular user account, it will not mount the drive. Did 'chown' on /mnt/usb and /dev/sdb1 so that the user owns everything. The same 'mount' command as above gives the message "mount: only root can do that". Disabled SELinux as a test -- same result.

Where else would permissions need to be set? And what changed? This worked automatically in previous versions of Fedora -- it would mount the device and pop up Nautilus.

[mwesten]

If you're not using suspend, then it would appear to be a different issue. My F14 latest does mount USB drives from the user account properly. I don't have any other suggestions at this point.

[jcrowley3]

Found this thread -- http://www.linux-archive.org/gentoo-...onsolekit.html

Since I'm coming into X through VNC, this may be the same problem. ck-list-sessions shows the session as Active = FALSE and Local = FALSE. (The USB device is virtualized over usbip.)

[jcrowley3]

Tried doing a ck-launch-session to launch, but no change.

Anybody have any suggestions on how to proceed? At this point our whole project is stopped dead.

Is there a fix for FC 14? Can/should you downgrade or uninstall ConsoleKit? Retreat to FC12 or FC??? Some other approach?

BTW: In general, would think that it's bad policy to install CK as a major system component with essentially no documentation. Running ck-launch-session from the console apparently does nothing. Running it with -v or -help options produce no output. Running it with garbage options generates some log error messages from NetworkManager. Running ck-list-sessions shows that ALL are set to Active = FALSE (even the SSH session to root that I'm using to try to diagnose this problem). Appreciate all the forum guys trying to wrestle this to the ground, but this is not a good situation for the Fedora community. .... end of rant

[nsnbm]

I'm not familiar with the virtual environment but my usbs mount with the following line which I placed in /etc/fstab:

/dev/sdb1 /media/usb vfat user,noauto,noatime,umask=0,rw,exec 0 0

I run mount as a user to mount the usb, not root, and nothing mounts automatically. If the usb wont mount, I check the file:
/proc/partitions to see what the kernel is calling the usb and if it's something other than sdb1, I have to use root to mount it. I suppose I could make a heap of lines similar to the above on in /etc/fstab to cover lots of the possible names so that I wouldn't have to resort to using root, but in my case I don't need to do that. Ben.

[jcrowley3]

Thanks for the info, but this is still a problem in our environment. We have non-sysadmin users who will plug in a USB flash drive so it needs to mount automatically.

---------- Post added at 09:54 AM GMT ---------- Previous post was at 08:12 AM GMT ----------

FYI -- same bug seemed to appear in Ubuntu -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lu...it/+bug/544139 -- and they seemed to have a patch for it. Any chance of getting this fix into an update for FC14?

Our current plan is to regress to FC13 or FC12 in an attempt to get a stable system for production. Not a good option, but appears necessary. Let me know if anyone has an alternative.

[MichaelBurns]

I am not computer savvy enough to understand/offer solutions, but perhaps my situation may offer a hint to someone more knowledgeable.

I have been trying Fedora 14 Live for the past day (~18 hours or so). I have been playing around trying to figure out the best way to set it up for my own personal taste, including the basic live desktop, live FEL, and FEL installed to usb stick in lieu of harddrive. I installed the live iso to a usb stick using the simple one-line "disk-destroyer" (dd) command from Ubuntu (Easy Peasy 1.1):

dd if=/path/to/Fedora.iso of=/dev/sda

In all instances of running the Fedora 14, usb sticks that I plug in have been successfully automounting - that is until about 10 minutes ago (thus here I am posting in this thread). Now, when I plug in a usb stick, I get a popup message (annoyingly unselectable with <alt><tab>):

Unable to mount <myfilesystemlabel>
Not Authorized

This happens with three different usb sticks that were previously successfully automounting.

Right before this started happening, I was playing around with fdisk to prepare a usb stick for livecd-iso-to-disk. Also, I had just for the first time installed livecd-tools. So, perhaps one or both of these two activities is the culprit? However, note that the other usb sticks were NOT plugged in while I was messing with fdisk, so I'm pretty sure that accidental formatting is not the problem (which I hope to confirm soon on my other laptop).

update:

Indeed, my usb sticks mount just fine on the other laptop. So, this is some Fedora issue.

Since I have the other laptop, I can leave my Fedora running with this problem so that we can use my system as a testbed. I don't mind running even the most dangerous commands because I am running live, so a simple reboot will fix anything (short of flashing my bios, I suppose). So, suggest anything that you think will fix it, and I can run it on my machine.

[DBelton]

one way to do it is to add a line to your /etc/sysctl.conf file

edit your /etc/sysctl.conf file (as root)

and add this line:

vfs.usermount=1

save and reboot

Other ways would be to add the drive to your /etc/fstab file

[Gitchimakwa]

There's a very simple, if non-obvious workaround.

Simply click System->Log out <username>,
then select "switch user".

Once you're out to where you have to enter your password again, credentials are restored
and user-mounts work.


jeq