usb flash and HD Permission trouble

[harjim]

First, thanks for your help so far. Sorry, this is the first time in a few days I have had time to fool with this.

I changed the fstab entry as you suggested. When I plug my flash drive in an icon pops up and I right click and try to mount. I get an "Operation Failed" warning with the following message: "/dev/sda1 found in /etc/fstab.

Here is my fstab file with the latest changes:

/dev/hdb2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb3 /home reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/hdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /windows/c ntfs ro,umask=0222,user,gid=users 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/usbflash auto auto,uid=jim,rw 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0

[apoorv_khurasia]

Do you know what filesystem your usb is? If it is fat32 for example then you can try this entry in your fstab

/dev/sda1      /mnt/stick   vfat    noauto,user,rw,exec,sync  0 0

before that make sure that the output of the following command

ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/usb*

yields sda1. In case it gives something else then change the fstan entry accordingly. Post if this works and do post if this fails. Also try mouting the drive by issuing a command rather than using the gui so that you can have a look at what error messages pop up. Try also mounting as root first to see if this works. Later we can go for non-root users too.

Edit: Also check the output of dmesg to see if there are any driver errors. Any such message

usb.c: USB device 4 (vend/prod 0xdda/0x2005) is not claimed by any active driver.

is an indication of a driver error.

[harjim]

I have done two things: I changed the fstab and ran the command you suggested. It yielded information about sda1.

Here is what happens after changing the fstab entry:

When signed in as a user:
When I try to mount in the gui, it reports back the error already described. When I try to mount via the command line, It says that only the root can do that. I sign in as su and I can mount it, however, all files are still read-only and I can not copy any files to the flash drive.

When I sign in as root:
I get the same error when I try to mount through the gui and I can mount it via the command line. However, like when I mount it as a user, I can not copy any files to the drive.

The changes to the fstab did not yield any changes in the system. It is behaving exactly as before.

[apoorv_khurasia]

I am now pretty sure that you are not in the USB group. Did you follow the suggestions I gave? The first thing you have to do is to add yourself to the usb group.

usermod -G usb  <username>

About the read only thing:- Is by any chance your USB drive formatted in a FS for which your kernel does not have write support e.g. NTFS? In case it is you might try to switch to FAT or include write support for that FS in your kernel. Post if this helps you.

[harjim]

apoorv_khurasia, you ask a very good question. One that I can not readily answer.

I do know that the usb hard drive is most definitely formatted NTFS as I have been using it with Windows XP. So, now I have my answer for that drive. However, I have not formatted the flash drive, so I am not sure if it is FAT32 or NTFS.

Your one question triggers two questions back to you.

1) How do I determine how the flash drive is formatted?

2) How do I include write support for FS in my kernel?

When you answer, please remember that this is my first time swimming in the Linux waters and do not know very much. You have been very patient and I appreciate your time and knowledge.

[apoorv_khurasia]

Since you are new to Linux I will suggest that you mount the USB while on Windows and see drive properties by right clicking on the USB drive icon. It will tell you whether you have NTFS or FAT32 FS. You can copy all the data from the USB to somewhere else and then format the drive as FAT32 on Windows (just right click on USB, choose format and in options presented next choose Quick Format FAT32).

Do remember to add yourself to USB group in case you have not done so yet.

For the kernel support thing you will have to install the kernel source on your SUSE OS. You can do so in YAST. Then after you have installed the kernel source go to /usr/src/linux and run as root (infact all that follows has to be done as root)

make menuconfig

Then it shall present a nice menu to you. Choose Filesystem Support there and mark * (by pressing space bar) on desired FS.

Exit and save the kernel config and then run

make clean
make
make modules_install

Then it shall create a boot image called bzImage in /usr/src/linux/arch/i386(or686)/boot/bzImage. Copy this file
to /boot

mv /boot/bzImage /boot/old_bzImage
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot

Now open /etc/lilo.conf. Go to the line which defines your SUSE boot. It should be the first option available (if it is not, don't worry just find it). Change the boot image to

image=/boot/bzImage

Run

lilo -v

Reboot the system.
I will strongly suggest that you read as much as you can about lilo and kernel compilation (that is what we have done) before you try any of these things as for a first time user they are quite new and hence risky to use.

[harjim]

Thanks for your reply.

I have already made sure what the file format is on the flash drive, through my xp system. It is FAT32.

I looked in Yast and can not find the correct menu to install the kernel source.

Then, your directions say change lilo.conf. Suse 10.1 uses Grub. I looked for grub.conf and there is only a few lines of code in there, nothing like you describe. However, when I was in yast, I found this in the System - Boot Loader menu, I can edit the boot sequence there. Here is what it looks like now:

Label Type Image/Device
Suse Linux 10.1 Image /boot/vmlinuz (/dev/hdb2,root=/dev/hdb2)

[beag]

Just had "another go at converting to linux" (all previous attempts, i fell off the wagon and went back to Windoze) not now with SUSE 10.1... i'm buying shares in Novell.....

anyhoo...

Just thought i'd share my fix for this problem:

When I did a "dmesg" command as mentioned previously in this thread, it showed that:

usb 1-1: Product: RunDisk
usb 1-1: Manufacturer: RAmosTek
usb 1-1: SerialNumber: K5G28PRM26-113

and that this USB device ( my mem stick) was related to sda1.
when i looked in /etc/fstab i saw that the "C drive" desktop icon was related to sda1. see below (put in automatically during install, dunno why):

/dev/hda2 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/sda1 /dos/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/hda1 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto noauto,user,sync 0 0

so....... I changed the fstab line:

/dev/sda1 /dos/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0

to:

/dev/sda2 /dos/C vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0

and this worked a treat!!!! no problem seeing my USB drive now.

hope this helps someone, lemme know if it does, or, alternately, if my post is a load of crap that's upset regular posters, lemme know that too (it's my first time you see).

[savo]

I am now pretty sure that you are not in the USB group. Did you follow the suggestions I gave? The first thing you have to do is to add yourself to the usb group.

usermod -G usb  <username>

About the read only thing:- Is by any chance your USB drive formatted in a FS for which your kernel does not have write support e.g. NTFS? In case it is you might try to switch to FAT or include write support for that FS in your kernel. Post if this helps you.

Guys, please... If you're going to post commands, rtfm...

usermod -G <group> <user> will effectively replace a user's group membership with whatever group/s you specify

usermod -a -G <group> <user> will append whatever groups you specify, to the users original group memberships.

note to newbs: this means use -a, unless you want to blow away your user's group memberships