Mount USB flash drive automatically at boot?

[bachtiar]

If I boot FC4 with flashdrive plugged in, it doesn't get mounted automatically. I have to unplug it and plug it in again, then the hotplug system will pick it up, create /dev/sdx and mount it.

Is there a way to tell hotplug "check if device is already present, and execute a hotplug script"? I don't want to put it in /etc/fstab, because it's not always there.

Many thanks!

[ericv13]

I don't have an answer, but I can post a 'me too'. I have 4 USB hard drives attached to an FC4 system. If I plug them in after the system boots all works as expected with hal/fstab-sync/udev (they show up in fstab and /dev and can be mounted). If I reboot the system or power cycle it they occasionally do not show up anywhere except in /proc/bus/usb (no /dev entries, no fstab entries). The behavior is intermittent.

After playing around a bit I found that some USB ports caused it to come up more reliably than others (timing?).

I had this problem on another machine a couple of months ago (fc4 as well) and ended up writing total hack rc.local script to scan through /sys/bus/scsi/devices/*/block/sd* and using the contents of 'dev' to make device nodes and mount the filesystems. It might be a hint that sometimes this script takes a long time (20 secs) before it sees all the drives I expect on the system.

[ericv13]

This may help (or there may be a better way someone will point out), but one the default stuff installs entries in /etc/fstab and /dev I still have the problem of the filesystem not being mounted (despite the policies in hal). I *could* add a new callout in hal that runs after the fstab-sync and mounts the device, but here's another way that's working for me: use autofs with a program map.

auto.master:
...
/s /etc/auto.media --timeout=0
...

auto.media:
#!/bin/bash

awk "/\/media\/$1/{print \"-fstype=\"\$3\" :\"\$1}" < /etc/fstab

This makes everything in /etc/fstab under /media appear automatically under /s/volname. Lo-tech, but it does work. I used --timeout 0 (never unmount) because this is a video server and the (very long) delay mounting reiserfs filesystem causes troubles.

To use this you have to 'chkconfig autofs on' and 'service autofs start'.

[fire-fly]

i had this problem with usb hard drive but not memory stick. Using my friend's usb drive, and it seem to work well. I have been waiting for a solution since FC4 release !!

[foxmuldar]

newbie here, can someone please give me instructions or point me in the direction of instructions? i need to edit my fstab file to auto mount my usb hard drive, also i want to be able to see my ntfs files.

thanks in advance....
foxmuldar,

[fire-fly]

Originally Posted by foxmuldar

newbie here, can someone please give me instructions or point me in the direction of instructions? i need to edit my fstab file to auto mount my usb hard drive, also i want to be able to see my ntfs files.

thanks in advance....
foxmuldar,

Go to http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/inde...ong_Shing_Chia

[foxmuldar]

thanks for the help, i got the usb drive to load, but i need to see my ntfs files...can ya help please?

foxmuldar,