Ubuntu

Bad Volume icons on XFCE desktop

Asked by Malcolm Jaros

On my desktop (Xubuntu 7.10) are nine Volume icons, four of which do nothing but generate error messages.
A left click on a *non-functional* icon produces two error messages of the following nature:-
One says: Cannot mount volume - wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on/dev/sdc5. Missing codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so
The other says: Unable to mount "536M Volume": Unknown error.
Do these messages indicate a serious problem? What should be done to resolve it?
Where is the best place to find documentation on problems of this nature?

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Harvey Muller
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Harvey Muller (hlmuller) said : 		#1

I had a similar problem with volume icons created automatically for newly inserted USB devices. My issue was caused by bad /etc/fstab autogeneration when installing from LiveUB (converted from LiveCD).

Please review your /etc/fstab file and report back if the filesystem type each volume is supposed to be is correct.

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Malcolm Jaros (maljaros) said : 		#2

Sorry, I am an idiot! I forgot to mention in the original post that the "non-functional" Volumes are not referenced in /etc/fstab.
Two of the icons labelled "536M Volume" - probably appeared when I was burning iso files to CD.
One labelled "43G Volume" probably relates to an external HD that connects through a USB port and the fourth, "1G Volume", was probably a USB memory stick.

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Best Harvey Muller (hlmuller) said : 		#3

MalJaros,

"Do these messages indicate a serious problem?"

Based on your last response, I do not believe your problem is serious. It appears that you have volume icons created for removable media, that do not remove automatically after the device is removed.

"What should be done to resolve it?"

First, I use the Gnome desktop, not XFCE. So my advice to you is to check all three of these links to see if they meet your needs. They describe how to remove and or limit the volume icons that appear on your desktop.

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=528716
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=405536
    https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-users/2007-April/000484.html

Let me know if this resolves your question, or if you require more information.

Regards,

Harvey

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Malcolm Jaros (maljaros) said : 		#4

Thank you Harvey.
The three links that you provided (I obviously need to improve my search techniques) were most helpful but did not solve the problem directly.
The first thread 528716 taught me new, useful things about configuring Thunar, but did not resolve the *ghost Volume* issue. The second, thread 405536: quote The desktop settings are useless in this regard, as checking and unchecking 'removable devices' or any of the others does nothing to the desktop unquote: suggested that the problem may be a lingering bug in Thunar. This suspicion was reinforced by the third link: quote
> i have deactivated the volume manager.
>
> but the unmountable icons are still there and cannot be deleted.
>
 unquote.
The consensus (including your opinion) seems to be that the problem is a minor irritation with no serious side-effects, which is good news.
The problem resolved itself accidentally in a way that may suggest an answer. Some time yesterday we had a power outage and my system died after the UPS ran out. A first attempt to restart failed before opening Xfce, but the second attempt was successful and the *ghost volumes* had disappeared. So somewhere in the *autorecover* process something got fixed - this after my system had previously been through a few *normal* restarts without losing any of the ghosts.
Again, thank you.
Maljaros

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Malcolm Jaros (maljaros) said : 		#5

Thanks Harvey Muller, that solved my question.