USB not working with upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon

This is a common fault when a user has removed the flash disk unsafely.

Try re-mounting the disk like so:

1. Open a terminal.

2. Create a directory to temporarily mount the drive (eg "disk")
  mkdir disk

Mount disk
3. sudo mount -t vfat /dev/YOURDEVICE disk/

The flash disk should now mount and an icon should be available on the desktop. Allowing you to cleaning unmount the drive by right-clicking.

Post any errors you get.

Thanks, I can access the drive (ls) from the temporary mount point, but no icon appears on the desktop. Same after unmounting the drive, removing it, and putting it back in. Dmesg output looks the same.

I did unplug it earlier without unmounting (under Feisty Fawn). Perhaps something needs to be done to clean it up? The contents are also visible when plugging it into a Windows box.

PS - I'm actually on Hardy Heron.

mounting a filesystem will not make it appear on the desktop unless you mount it under the /media directory.

I thought USB sticks were supposed to mount under /media automatically? It seems that it happened under Feisty Fawn.

Many things might have been broken with that "upgrade", reinstalling Ubuntu should fix it.

That seems like a radical solution - is upgrade not reliable with Ubuntu? Would you reinstall Hardy Heron, or go back to Gutsy Gibbon?

Yes it's a radical solution but figuring out your problem might prove to be a lot of work too, specially because I don't everything you did to cause that. I would upgrade the more recent as possible, or to the latest LTS release.

Have you tried what nhasian said, mount it once in /media and unmount it safely in the desktop to clean a forced unmount?

(I believe Hardy Heron is the latest LTS release.)

I just tried this:

$ sudo mkdir /media/usbmem
[put in usb stick]
$ sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbmem

Nothing appears on desktop. Umounting from there does what StevePearce originally suggested, i.e. no chance of special cleanup because the stick is being unmounted from the desktop.

I notice that inserting a cd in the drive causes no effect too (used to cause k3b and maybe a cd player to launch). So I hypothesize that whatever is supposed to respond to removable media mounts is disabled somehow.

Going through the installation process with Ubuntu 8.10 32bit desktop edition sounds like a good plan. But there are 2 sneaky approaches worth considering.

1. Install 8.10 on a new partition and set it up as a dual-boot with what-ever edition you're currently using as the other part of the dual-boot. Note the new 8.10 partition could be on a slave drive or anything and 'only' needs about 5Gb. There's a page for dual-booting with Windows but it should work for dual-booting with another version of Ubuntu too
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

2. When you get to the Partitioning section of a standard install choose "Manual" rather than "Guided" or automatic. It looks scary but settles down after a moment or 2. Carefully make sure that every partition has the "Format partition?" check box unticked to prevent it from formatting anything. Hopefully then everything will be upgraded or completed, missing stuff will be added back in but hopefully extra packages will be largely untouched and the data should be untouched too. I would want to back up the "/home" folder before trying this of course.

Good luck and take care
Regards from
Tom :)

With option 1. you could look forward to one day making the feisty fawn partition nothing more than your /home partition and then future upgrades would be less scary ;)

Genius or what?
(errr, don't answer that;) )
Regards from
Tom

If you are still having trouble with this then please post it as a new question. Only the most recent questions tend to get looked at so posting/reposting a question just before america arrives online gives the best chance of getting a good few answers.

If the problem has been resolved then please follow the link to the forum thread and mark it as Solved.

Good luck and many regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom. The next time I rebooted, automount resumed. Odd that reboot after upgrade didn't catch it. Also k3b pops up when I put in a cd/dvd.

Ahh great.  It's good to hear you fixed it.  Was it the advice you got from here that did it or was it simply another reboot after doing all the forced mount and unmounts?

Thanks for getting back to us anyway
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Rebooting alone solved it.
Bill

lol, brilliant. Nicely done and congrats tho :)
Good to hear it's all fixed now :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)