[Mostly Resolved] can't mount USB-sticks automatically

[iivq]

I used hal/dbus/udev (I don't exactly what's what or how they work together) to automatically mount my various USB devices, I just clicked on them in KDE's media:/-tab and it mounted...

lately I have updated my kernel and emerge -vauD world'd, but didn't change anything related to that - yet the automounting doesn't work anymore.
The devices show up in the media:/-tab but when I click on it it comes up with: mount: can't find /dev/<device> in /etc/fstab or /ect/mtab (where <device> is sda1 or something similar.

Since that I rebuilt hal and dbus (which are still the same version), followed the "manual" on http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=DBUS (guessing the /usr/local/etc/hal/device.d/60-pmount.hal location to be /etc/hal/device.d/60-pmount.hal), yet alas, no solution. As root I can manually mount the devices using pmount (or using mount if I specify a mount point) but not as a user, while my user is a member of the plugdev group.

Q: Am I missing something obvious? Does anyone have a (hint at a) solution?

[--EDIT--] I checked, suddenly it worked when I started kde in root mode, yet not in user mode, so it's a permission problem. But still no Idea how to fix it...

P.S. adding the devices to /etc/fstab is not an option: I work with a lot of different usb devices. Besides, it worked without before...

Tijmen

[Goddchen]

what did you change in your kernel?

[cconroy]

make sure your user is in the plugdev group

[aldimond]

When you updated your kernel and system did it include a switch from devfs to udev? If so, there might be some permissions that need tweaking in the /dev directory. If I recall (have not done this in a while) USB mass-storage devices show up as SCSI disks, which are /dev/sd*. Which is just as silly as the IDE CD drives that used to show up as SCSI drives that started the big fight between Linus and the cdrecord guy... anyhow, typically the device nodes should belong to a group that you can include your user in and give it the proper access.

I had a similar issue with DRI/DRM not working, and I found that it was because there was some device that was no longer being created dynamically, so the "mode 0666" in my xorg.conf wasn't making that device accessible; checked permissions on it, saw group ownership was "video", added my user to the "video" group and all was good. I hope that's the solution to your problem too.

[EDIT]: Ah, Conroy beat me to it. Should not have wasted my time yakking about cdrecord

[iivq]

Thanks for all your answers, alas to no avail...

Goddchen: I didn't change anything in the kernel, just updated to a newer version (2.6.9 to 2.6.15). Also, Support for hot-pluggable devices (CONFIG_HOTPLUG), and Kernel Userspace Events (CONFIG_KOBJECT_UEVENT) are both on.

aldimond:
Nope, I was allready using udev. Everything worked. BTW, I'm not sure whether the change in behaviour was caued by the kernel upgrade, or by a *long* (2.5 months or so) emerge -vauD world...

cconroy:

[cconroy]

when you upgraded did you upgrade gcc from 3.3.x to 3.4.x? (perhaps accidentally as 3.4.x is now stable)

if so, then you have to clean up your system because things compiled between different versions aren't binary compatible
Check out the GCC Upgrade guide http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-upgrading.xml

[iivq]

Yes, I have upgraded and not ran the upgrade stuff...

I'm busy with that now, but it takes some time (so I'm first cleaning out my world, I noticed a lot of kde 3.3 and 3.2-stuff lying around while I use 3.4...)

I'll let the outcome know.

Tijmen

[iivq]

This worked, except that when copying a directory to a USB stick, then entering that directory, the dir appears to contain only one file. Yet on a unmount / remount all files are present.

Also, testing was difficultized by a borked stick, which doesn't let me delete or copy any information from and to it (nor in windows): it acts readonly, yet it has no such switch...

Tijmen