USB Storage Device Automount

Question

Under Ubuntu 10.04 one of the problems which appeared is that USB devices would no longer automatically mount when plugged in. Normally I would get a pop up message asking what application I wanted to open the newly plugged in device with, however now that doesn't happen.

This happens regardless of the way the device is formatted (NTFS or FAT32) and all other USB devices (printer, keyboard and mouse) work perfectly.

My current solution is the mount them manually using sudo mount dev/... /medai/... however to be honest I'm just getting tired of having to do this.

I'm happy to post any extra information you are likely to need. I know there will be lots of places I could look to find out what's going wrong but I have no idea where to start really.

Solution 1

Solved, at least for me.

I think it is a hardware issue, because I tried a 12.04 live CD in my desktop and everything works fine. I tried at my laptop and it doesn't open the USB automatically.

Any way the solution that I found is to install usbmount by running the command below on the terminal:

sudo apt-get install usbmount

Then USB mounts fine and automatically.

More info in this page. I also installed autofs.

Hope this works for you.

Solution 2

Something is broken in an update I guess. Try running:

sudo mkdir /dbos 
sudo fdisk -l
# find your memory stick
sudo mount /dev/sdc /dbos
# now your memory stick is in /dbos

Solution 3

In gconf-editor, look under /apps/nautilus/preferences. There should be a setting called "media_automount". Ensure that it is checked. There is also an option called "media_automount_open" that you can set if you wish it to open the media in nautilus automatically in addition to mounting it.

Comments

[poolie]

I'd start by looking whether there are log entries in ~/.xsession-errors, /var/log/daemon or /var/log/kern when you attach a device...

[matto1990]

@poolie Nothing obvious. Lots of "no route to host"'s in the xsessions one though

[Ralf]

Does it also happen when you boot from a live-cd or live-usb? It's the whole 'i upgraded to' statement, that makes it quite hard to figure this out. Was it a fresh install? Or was a customized ubuntu, perhaps with a bunch of PPA's, that you were upgrading?

[matto1990]

@Ralf Sorry, it was actually a fresh install. I forgot I tried to just do the update but it broke and ended up just doing a fresh install. I'll update the question to reflect this.

[matto1990]

All of them are set to "ask what to do". That's ok I'm guessing.

[matto1990]

I've installed it but when I plug in a device noting ever gets mounted in any of the usb<X> folders.

[sagarchalise]

This seems to be a regular problem: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1468755 and ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1470705 and I found one script which automatically mount ntfs formats: webupd8.org/2010/04/ubuntu-script-to-automatically-mount.htm‌​l.

[matto1990]

Both are check already and the problem still persists

[matto1990]

I've done that and launchpad suggests that this bug is the same and I don't need to post another one. It seems to be marked as fixed though :S bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/435136

[matto1990]

I'm on a laptop with no floppy drive and there's no line like that in my fstab. Do I need lines in fstab to point to the removable devices or is this not what fstab is for?

[Nerdfest]

Damn ... I was confident

[Javier Rivera]

No. Removable devices don't need a line in fstab. Just the filesystems that are mounted at boot need them.

[matto1990]

Still no on that one :'( No error either. I'm thinking it's just going to have to be a complete reinstall job :(