Dolphin question SOLVED

[dougmack]

PCLOS 3.2.18-pclos1.pae.bfs, up to date.  I plug in a thumb drive. Its LED blinks. A black box comes up on the lower right of the screen that says it's there, and how big. (3.8GB.)  Most of the time, neither
Dolphin nor Konqueror can find it. alsho I did find it once a couple of days ago, and copied a downloaded file to it for transfer to another machine.  Eventually, however, after opening a terminal and cd'ing to
/media, I find a listing for disk-4, and cd'ing to that, and ls'ing it, I find it is the thumb drive.  Now after this, apparently some kind of path has been opened, because now it shows up in Dolphin.  Is there
a way to fix this?  

Perplexed--doug

[Rudge]

Do you have "Device Notifier" running?

It's a widget that you add to the system tray.  

If you are running it, right click and check the settings.

[T6]

the device you describe, is a flash drive formatted as fat32 or ntfs or ext or what?

is it old or new?

have you formated it?

[dougmack]

I don't think I have Device Notifier. (I'm on the other OS--XP--on the same machine right now, since LO and OO and Symphony mangled some .doc files I was sent to edit.
WordPerfect had no trouble.) I'll find it, if it's in Synaptic, and load it.  The flash drive is probably a few years old, and it's formatted the way it came, which I assume is NTFS,
since my Win7 system could read it.  It can't be all that new, since i doubt if you can still buy a thumb drive as small as 4 GIG!  Just out of curiosity, what program will tell you
how a drive is formatted?  Will fdisk do that?  (I know GParted will, but that would be a hassle to load that just to find out.) Since my main use of flash drives is to move files
between Win7 and Linux, I need to keep the old standard format that Windows can read.
 
Well, maybe I'll dig up GParted, and find out what the format is, before I log back into Linux.

Thanx for the suggestion.  I'll try Device Notifier in just a bit, and report back what happens.

--doug

[agmg]

You can use diskdrake to change type/format/partition the usb drive.

[Rudge]

I don't think I have Device Notifier. (I'm on the other OS--XP--on the same machine right now, since LO and OO and Symphony mangled some .doc files I was sent to edit.
WordPerfect had no trouble.) I'll find it, if it's in Synaptic, and load it.  The flash drive is probably a few years old, and it's formatted the way it came, which I assume is NTFS,
since my Win7 system could read it.  It can't be all that new, since i doubt if you can still buy a thumb drive as small as 4 GIG!  Just out of curiosity, what program will tell you
how a drive is formatted?  Will fdisk do that?  (I know GParted will, but that would be a hassle to load that just to find out.) Since my main use of flash drives is to move files
between Win7 and Linux, I need to keep the old standard format that Windows can read.
 
Well, maybe I'll dig up GParted, and find out what the format is, before I log back into Linux.

Thanx for the suggestion.  I'll try Device Notifier in just a bit, and report back what happens.

--doug

I am perhaps leading you down a "rabbit's hole" with that "Device Notifier" mention.

It's not something that you would install from synaptic. It is simply something that you would add to the "System Tray".

You might be better off pursuing other suggestions than mine.      

[dougmack]

Well, to answer a question and ask one:  To answer:  GParted just says the thumb drive is formatted "MSDOS" and provides the number of heads (!) the sector size, etc.  Back in Linux, PCLOS Control Center>
Local Disks>Manage disk partitions:Device: SDD1; DOS Drive lette:C (just a guess); Type: FAT32; Size: 3.7 GB (99%).  Don't know what the 99% is--it's no where near full.
Question: Since there is some ambivalence about Device Notifier:  Why is there ambivalence?  Should I try it or not?  Can I uninstall it it I don't like it?   Will it blow something up? Where would I get it--it doesn't
appear to be on the system now, and is not in the repo.
Interestingly enough, it show up in Dolphin now--maybe because I probed with fdisk and the Control Center.

Thanx for the input.  I'll be back tomorrow (later today) to read here--it's 3:30 in the morning here!

--doug

[agmg]

I'm not at my PCLinuxOS machine at the moment to give you the exact steps but if you right click it the system tray area you can change which icons and notifications are visible. Device notifier should be there...

[Just17]

Device Notifier is a widget that sits in the system tray on the panel.

It is often hidden until it is used .....  as are other icons.

When you plug in a device it pops up ------  just as you described ----- and offers a few options regarding mounting and opening partitions on an inserted USB stick.

A black box comes up on the lower right of the screen that says it's there, and how big. (3.8GB.)

[dougmack]

You're right, I have Device Notifier. It seems to be that black box at the lower right corner of the screen that pops up when I plug in a thumb drive, and stays for maybe 5 seconds.
This doesn't answer the question: if Device Notifier knows a device is there, why doesn't Dolphin, and what, if anything, can be done to fix it?

--doug

[T6]

the black box is nto device notifier, it is just a pop up telling you that something happened, the device notifier is another thing, it tells you that a hardware was connected and it can perform some actions depending on the device

on your case it seems that the fat32 partition is not working properly, maybe you unmounted it while copying files and got corrupted or it just failed, something common in fat32 partitions on external flash drives

if you had important files in it, you could try connect it on a windows pc and see if it works, if not, use photorec to save the files in it and then delete partition and recreate it again

if happens again, change the flash drive, it is damaged

[The Chief]

You're right, I have Device Notifier. It seems to be that black box at the lower right corner of the screen that pops up when I plug in a thumb drive, and stays for maybe 5 seconds.
This doesn't answer the question: if Device Notifier knows a device is there, why doesn't Dolphin, and what, if anything, can be done to fix it?

--doug

Because it isn't mounted?  But, it shows up immediately in the "Places" list on my installation, whether mounted or not and even if Dolphin is already running when I plug it in.  Don't know if that is true for a new device or if it only works for those devices that have been previously mounted.

Even when the pop-up goes away, there should be a "USB" icon in the system tray.  Clicking on it brings the pop-up back and beside the device name, there is a small icon (on the right)  - click on this to mount the device (tooltip says "Click to mount  this device"). 

Or,  you can click on the device name and a list of possible actions will drop down, the last of which (at the bottom) is "Open with File Manager"

[The Chief]

To get the "Device Notifier," right click on the system tray, select "System Tray Settings," and then click the button to "Unlock Widgets."  Place a check mark in front of "Device Notifier," click "Apply" and exit.  You now have the Device Notifier widget. 

't forget to right click on the desktop and "Lock Widgets!"

[Just17]

It might be worth having a look at the partition table of the USB device .......  try, in a terminal,

fdisk -l  /dev/sd?     (substitute the correct letter for the ? )  .....   or else

fdisk -l         and copy/paste the info about the USB device

[dougmack]

Well, I don't guess I know what Device Notifier is, then.  Perhaps I don't have it. If I snap on the little triangle, I get a little box that says Notifications and Printer Applet.  There was another icon that I snapped on, and it mentioned
notifications also, but now it's gone--I guess I only get one shot at it.  I'll try a couple of other thumg=drives, and see if the system recognizes them, as well as Dolphin.  --doug