new external usb harddrive does not automount

[gilado]

I have been using an old WD 80GB external USB harddrive for 5 years now.

When I plug it in the first time after reboot it auto mounts, shows up on the desktop., etc. If I now safely remove, then replug it, won't show up. Manually mounting it works. It is formatted as FAT32 (bought it this way) and mounts as VFAT.

I just got a new 320GB seagate.  When I plugged it for the first time it did not show up.  I tried to mount manually and found out its an NTFS drive, mounts readonly.

I went ahead and reformatted it as ext3 (first redid its partition table using fdisk, one big Linux partition) This worked beautifully: i now can mount, umount, write files to it, etc. However, it still won't mount automatically.

What service is PCLOS is responsible for auto mounting? is it autofs? udev? why won't it auto mount, why doesn't the old drive auto remounts after the first time?

I poked around a bit and writing an automounter as a bash script does not seem complicated. However, before reinventing the wheel, I think I should attempt to fix the broken one I probably have

[Bald Brick]

KDE3 or KDE4?

[gilado]

3.5.10

[Bald Brick]

3.5.10

I've been on KDE4 for a few months by now and I'm fast forgetting everything related to KDE3.

Nevertheless I vaguely remember using the panel applet "Storage Media" to easily mount and unmount removable media.

Incidentally, your removable drives are probably mounted by hal-mount when udev first has created the device nodes for them.
 

[muungwana]

like blackbird, kde3 only exist in memory here. After you plug in your external mass storage device, type "media:/" in konqueror address bar and you should see an icon of your mass storage device. Right click it-> properties and somewhere there is an option to automount the device, select it and that should do it ..i think 

[gilado]

it's not kde related

it does not show up in media:// had it showed up i would not have the problem

[muungwana]

what does this command give you? "cat /etc/fstab"

[Bald Brick]

it does not show up in media:// had it showed up i would not have the problem

So the problem isn't really mounting the drives but that the system doesn't see them when you plug them back in.

Are the haldaemon and the KDED Media Manager running?

If they aren't you can check the box for haldaemon in "PCC -> System -> Manage system services" and for the KDED Media Manager in "kcontrol -> KDE Components -> Service Manager".

But start by posting the info muungwana asked for. (If your drives have lines in /etc/fstab they won't need HAL.)

[gilado]

cat /etc/fstab gives nothing

however ls /dev/disk/by-uuid reliably show when they are connected

[coffeetime]

it's not kde related

it does not show up in media:// had it showed up i would not have the problem

AFAIR it should be media:/

[gilado]

folks had it showed up in fstab i wouldn't be bugging you

[gilado]

>>> Are the haldaemon and the KDED Media Manager running?

Both are checked

[muungwana]

this is the first time i am hearing "cat /etc/fstab" doesnt give any output. How does your system boot up without fstab and its entries?

can you browse with your file manager to /etc folder and look for the text file named "fstab" and open it with a text editor?

maybe its permissions are wrong?

what output do this command give you? "ls -l /etc/fstab"

[gilado]

i meant regarding these two external drives

they do show up in /etc/mtab after i manually mount them

anyway i wrote a little script that runs in /etc/init.d watches for the drives and mounts them

i think what's going on is that haldaemon crashes after a while but i have not been able to catch red handed

[muungwana]

any reason why you dont want to show us your fstab?  ..there could be a number of reasons why things dont work as expected, sometimes people ask questions to rule out possibilities you may not have considered .. you said they show up in mtab after you mount them but didnt say how they show up in mtab and what options you passed to the mount command .. we cant rule out anything without knowing how stuff are on your system and the only way we can know that is by you answering questions that are asked or giving outputs of command you are asked