[SOLVED] Thumb Drive Not Visible from Open Office as an Available Drive

[opie]

I have a 16 GB Kingston Traveler USB thumb drive.  It is recognized by on my Dell Vostro 1500 notebook computer when I access it from Dolphin.  However, when I type a document in Open Office and want to save it directly to the thumb drive, the thumb drive does not show up as one of the available storage media in Open Office. In order to save the document to the thumb drive I have to save it to a file on the hard drive, open Dolphin, and then cut and paste it onto the thumb drive.  Is there some way I can access the thumb drive directly from OO?

[Bald Brick]

Have you tried accessing the drive from Dolphin before trying to access it from OOo? The point being that OpenOffice won't see the drive unless it's mounted, while Dolphin will actually mount it before opening it when you click it in the Places panel. You could of course mount it some other way too.

[Rudge]

When I save a document from Open Office to a mounted USB device, I click on "save as" and then the default location opens up, usually my last save point in my home directory. I then click the little box on the right labeled "Go Up One Level" I click on that twice until I can see the "Media" directory. I double click on that directory to find my usb device awaiting my "Save".   Hope this helps.     

[opie]

When I plug it in the toolbar pops up an icon that states that the usb Kingston thumb drive is plugged in.  When I open Dolphin I have immediate access to it.  It seems to be automatically mounted upon being plugged in.  OO, however, does not see it.

[Rudge]

When I plug it in the toolbar pops up an icon that states that the usb Kingston thumb drive is plugged in.  When I open Dolphin I have immediate access to it.  It seems to be automatically mounted upon being plugged in.  OO, however, does not see it.

opie, what happens when you do what I suggested? Does the device not show up in the /media directory? 

[Bald Brick]

When I plug it in the toolbar pops up an icon that states that the usb Kingston thumb drive is plugged in.  When I open Dolphin I have immediate access to it.  It seems to be automatically mounted upon being plugged in.  OO, however, does not see it.

I can only echo Rudge: have you looked under /media?

When you wrote

the thumb drive does not show up as one of the available storage media in Open Office

what did that really mean?

When you mount a partition (whether it is on a pen drive or a hard drive) it becomes part of the Linux file system hierarchy. It won't show up as some sort of "available storage media". It shows up as any other directory (folder) at its mountpoint. And if you haven't specified where the drive should be mounted, HAL will create a mountpoint and mount the drive under /media.

[opie]

opie, what happens when you do what I suggested? Does the device not show up in the /media directory?

I am sorry.  I did not follow your instructions properly.  I have now found it right where you said it would be. Thank you for your help.

I will have to learn the Linux file structure.  I was thinking that it should show up as a separate drive, but I now realize that is wrong.  The last time I used a thumb drive in Linux was in the older versions of PCLOS KDE.  If I remember correctly, it always mounted the device on the desktop. It even placed a nice little icon on the desktop.  I was confused with PCLOS 2010 when it did not mount there.

[musonio]

I had the same difficulty.
My wife frequently wants to save attached documents that she opens with oo and cannot find her pendrive (because of that hedious oo file picker), so what I did was to symlink /media folder to my Documents folder, which is where oo open the file chooser by default.

[opie]

In PCLOS 2009 KDE, which I am still running on a desktop, there is systems menu where one can go to storage devices and it opens up Konqueror which lists all of the storage devices, including USB thumbdrives, in one convenience menu.  I don't know why there is not the same convenient storage menu in the new PCLOS 2010 KDE.

[Bald Brick]

In PCLOS 2009 KDE, which I am still running on a desktop, there is systems menu where one can go to storage devices and it opens up Konqueror which lists all of the storage devices, including USB thumbdrives, in one convenience menu.  I don't know why there is not the same convenient storage menu in the new PLLOS 2010 KDE.

I don't either. If it's not a way of forcing us to use Dolphin instead of Konqueror. The "Places" panel in Dolphin has much of the same functionality. (Otherwise I still prefer Konqueror.)

[Rudge]

opie, what happens when you do what I suggested? Does the device not show up in the /media directory?

I am sorry.  I did not follow your instructions properly.  I have now found it right where you said it would be. Thank you for your help.

No problem. Glad to hear you got it sorted out.