Lubuntu/Ubuntu 12.10 won't recognize USBs

Question

I'm running Lubuntu 12.10 and everything was going fine until yesterday. Whenever I try and use an SD card or USB stick/USB hub it won't recognize it in the file manager.

I ran lsusb which recognized the Kingston Datatraveler USB that I'm trying to use, but when I ran ls /dev/sd* it came up with

/dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda5

WITH the USB stick still in. I took the USB stick out and tried it again and came up with the same results.

Solution 1

I tried a number of ways (and the answer above), but didn't get anywhere on my system which was having the same issues. Then I had a brain-wave and looked in the "user settings" from the gui menu.

It seems the ability to mount drives is disabled for user profiles by default.

Click on the "Advanced Settings" for the user that needs to have access to external media, switch to the "User Privileges" tab and then put a tick/check in "Mount user-space filesystems (FUSE)". I'd review what else is disabled while you are there, as it may solve other problems!

It got my system working how I expected it to, and I hope this answer helps others.

Solution 2

its been awhile since I had to do this but. here is what you will want to do. your problem is that it isn't passing the privs to allow you to read or write.

• open terminal
• sudo apt-get install pmount udisks udisks2 gvfs consolekit

next

• open terminal
• su root
• cd /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/

make a new file called 55-myconf.pkla

edit the file and input this

[Storage Permissions]
 Identity=unix-group:storage
 Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown
 ResultAny=yes
 ResultActive=yes
 ResultInactive=no

Next:

• cd /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/

make a new file called 10-udisks.pkla

input this into the file

[Local Users]
 Identity=unix-group:users
 Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.*
 ResultAny=yes
 ResultInactive=yes
 ResultActive=yes

[Local Users]
 Identity=unix-group:users
 Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.*
 ResultAny=yes
 ResultInactive=yes
 ResultActive=yes

Now please make sure you are in the storage group, if you are not sure try:

do this as yourself not root

sudo usermod -a -G storage yourusername

Good luck hope this helps, like I said its been awhile since I had to do that.