usb automounting and windows partitions on desktop

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I have had opensuse 11.2 installed on my netbook for a couple of months and it has worked smoothly. Recently after a couple of updates however, I have noticed that when I plug a usb drive into my netbook, opensuse is not automatically mounting the drive. Just then upgraded my system to 11.3 and I still have the same problem.

When i run a “fdisk -l” I can see that my usb is there and when I run a mount command I can successfully mount it and access my files. However opensuse seems to no longer mount it for me automatically. I am running gnome and my netbook is a dell inspiron mini. Is there some way to turn the mounting of usb drives back on so I don’t have to run a tedious command every time?

I have also noticed recently, that my windows partition appears as an icon on my desktop, whereas it never used to. I am confused as to why it has suddenly appeared here and my usb’s are no longer mounting.

Any ideas or solutions???

2

  1. When you mount them manualy, what statement do you use?

  2. When you do not want that silly icon, just remove it.

3

I can mount it using a command like:

mount /dev/sdc1 /media

I have also checked my gconf and I found a checkbox for auto-mounting and it was already checked.

In response to 2) how can i remove the icons? There is no delete or remove option. I still want windows drives mounted, I just don’t want icons on my desktop.

Thanks for the quick reply!

4

Thanks also for your quick answers. Makes the conversation easier :slight_smile:

The mounting of what you call “the windows drives” (which are in fact partitions with NTFS or the like file systems on them) is done at boot because they are in /etc/fstab. Icons on your desktop have nothing to to with mounting. Somebody had the (imho silly) idea that it would be usefull to show that on the desktop of an end-user.

Show the output of

cat /etc/fstab

to check this and I also like to see that as an extra check in the case of your USB devices.

(Please put the output between CODE tags to preserve the format. You can do this by:
a) using The Go Advanced option below right of the Response;
b) selecting the copied/pasted computer text and hen click the # buton in the toolbar.)

5

Here is the output to the command you requested. I have two usb flash drives connected and one of them has been manually mounted with:

mount /dev/sde1 /media

The cat output is:


/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250315AS_6VC3N41M-part5 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250315AS_6VC3N41M-part6 /                    ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250315AS_6VC3N41M-part7 /home                ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250315AS_6VC3N41M-part2 /windows/C           ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST9250315AS_6VC3N41M-part3 /windows/D           ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
6

The /etc/fstab shows that on boot two partitions (sda2 and sda3) are mounted on /windows/C and /windows/D resp. at boot. That is done regardless if anybody logs in or not. Thus the contents of these file systems are available regardless of the fact that an icon is show on the desktop of the person that happens to log in in the GUI. Now it must possible to remove hem.

You forgot to tell what desktop you use (and I forgot to ask). The following is for KDE. Nothing happens when you right click on them? It may be that the “container” (rectangular box) on the desktop where they are shown is locked. Then, iirc, right click on the “cashew” and click “Unlock widgets”. Then try again on the icons. Do not forget to lock your widgets again. It stops you from meddling with your desktop by accident.

The /etc/fstab also shows that there is nothing there about the USB devices. This is often not the case and most often correct, but I wanted to be sure.
Please tell first which desktop you use.

7

I did say in my original post that I use gnome, sorry I should have made it more clear.

8

You are right. I skipped over it (using capital characters where they belong do make reading easier). I hope someone with Gnome knowledge will jump in then (for both questions).