Weird Usb Problem On 10.3

I have noticed several posts about mounting usb storage devices, but did not get around to trying to use mine till this afternoon. On every version of suse I have tried this was never an issue-external drives, usb sticks, etc. all automounted just fine. However, I tried my two usb sticks and neither would mount, nor would an external 40gig seagate usb drive. Looking around for some info I saw that someone else had a problem but could mount as root. So, I logged in as root and the two usb sticks mounted just as they always did. I was assuming that there must be some config issue with 10.3, but I haven't had time to look into it further. But, the weird thing is that after logging out as root and back as a normal user, I was able to mount the usb sticks automatically, and everything seems to work as usual. I have not tried the drive, but will do so tonight. Has anyone else here ran into this? I intend to search around and see if there is a known bug, but I would be interested in hearing if anyone else has this issue.

I have had intermittent trouble even with my 10.2 box...so I have been making
fstab entries AHEAD of time and a mount point...and then it's recognized and mounts
at THAT point...since it's looking for a specific device and file system (vfat)...

On 10.3, remember that you hard drivers are sda, sdb now...etc....so if you have two
hard drives...the usb stick will be sdc..so if you do mount a device...it will be the next
in line on the Scuzzy device....

Anyway....this may or not be related...but I have another post where I am having trouble
mounting my nfs share from my server on the 10.3 box UNLESS I am root, even though
USER is in the fstab file....this is the first time I have ever had an issue like this...and
my other machines are configured EXACTLY the same way...so I think..."something's
up with that" but I don't know what yet...

I am going to do a CLEAN INSTALL of 10.3RC on on the test box tomorrow, probably and
see if these issues are still there....if I remember to, I'll plug in my external HD BEFORE
making my normal fstab entries and see what happens...

Overall, I think it will be a good release, but there are a lot of internal changes...especially
with things like the new IDE driver and such....

I mean...what does "sr0" stand for (optical drives)...the terminology is all different now!
Well..wouldn't be fun if they didn't play with your mind a bit, right?

Thanks for the info. I did a clean install today of 10.3rc1, and eventually got around to trying my usbsticks. The two sticks mounted automatically and worked perfectly, however when I connected the usb drive it showed up but wasn't mounted. Not only wasn't it mounted, but when I disconnected it-I even tried the safely remove option-the icon stayed on the desktop, and at that time none of mu usbsticks would mount. I tried logging out, logging in as root, nothing worked except a shutdown and reboot. So something is evidently not quite right. I run 10.1 on my desktop-the unit I am having a problem with is my laptop-and everything works fine on it. Plus, the other suse releases-SLED, 10.1 and 10.2-that I have had on this laptop never had this issue. So I am a bit puzzled. USB support has not been an issue before. Hopefully someone else will chime in here and let me know if they have this issue. I thought about reporting it as a bug, but I would rather know that others are having this same problem. I guess what puzzles me most is that I have never had to do any kind of manual configuration to use this usb drive-a seagate-before. Thanks again for the feedback. FYI, I have been playing around with the new release today and other than the usb issue, I have not had any problems. I really like it, especially the "one-click" install of some packages. Multimedia was a snap. As I write this an idea occurred to me, I have a spare drive in my desktop and I think I will install 10.3 tomorrow and see if I have problems mounting the usb drive. It is possible that the issue may be related to my laptop in some way. Thanks again.

tatwell, sometimes similar weird issues are solved changing the permissions of the mounted device, as root... Log in (with GUI) as a root, go to media:/, right click (assuming it got mounted) and set proper permissions, sometimes the drive is read only or forbidden... its a strange thing, but happens quite frequently.
Of course this only in case your problem would not be solved at the next reboot... hopefully it won't. good luck

So something is evidently not quite right. I run 10.1 on my desktop-the unit I am having a problem with is my laptop-and everything works fine on it. Plus, the other suse releases-SLED, 10.1 and 10.2-that I have had on this laptop never had this issue. So I am a bit puzzled. USB support has not been an issue before. Hopefully someone else will chime in here and let me know if they have this issue. I thought about reporting it as a bug, but I would rather know that others are having this same problem. [/b]

I plan to install 10.3 RC1 this weekend and check out this very issue.

They are revising their method to mount USB devices in 10.3, to try and add a hot plug in capability for NTFS formatted hard drives, and this may have caused a problem.

Did you go with the standard RC1 install, or did you add selected additional applications? I found the 3rd party app (which is now included with 10.3) ntfs-config could cause problems.

I suspect if you create an external mount mount, say /windows/G, you will still be able to mount your drives as root (from a konsole, to that mount point), and then use them as a regular user.

It may be worth while writing a bug report on this.....

Thanks for the feedback. I have been tinkering with this problem using your suggestions. I checked my installation and the only ntfs packages i have are ntfs-3g and ntfsprogrs, ntfs-config is not installed.I tried the drive again and now it mounts and I can read a windows file that I put on it. So I am not sure what, if anything changed to make it work. I will be interested to see what you come up with.

could you post here your fstab file?

Sure, here it is;
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK6032G_66951297T-part6 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK6032G_66951297T-part7 /home ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK6032G_66951297T-part1 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.U TF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK6032G_66951297T-part5 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0

I must have had a senior moment here, but am I right in thinking that Linux can't write to an NTFS disk?

yeah sure it cannot *natively* write to ntfs. The point is that you said you cannot read, unless you are root.
Have you tried unplugging and re-plugging while logged in only as user?
If the latter still wont allow you to read as a user, login as root or open a konqueror window as root, go to media:/ right click on the disk and go to properties. Which are the permissions for the disk?

PS: your fstab looks normal, nothing suspicious there

You're right. Initially I couldn't read, and with my new install of 10.3rc1 I couldn't read at first either, but suddenly and without changing anything I then could read, and have not experienced the lockups I had at first. Sorry if I confused you. And thanks for your comments. I am not sure if I have a bug here or what, but for now anyway everything looks like it is working. I was not too worried about the usb drive, what was getting me was not being able to use my usb sticks as I use those all the time for moving school files around. Thanks again.