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Asked: 2013-04-26 11:30:20 +0800 CST

Detect and mount devices

  • 772

I upgraded Ubuntu today and everything works smooth except that Ubuntu doesn't detect any other storage devices. My / and /home partitions work fine, but my other partitions are just not detected. I wouldn't mind, except the same problem goes with USB sticks.

When I plug in a USB stick, the light goes on, but the computer detects nothing. Just to be clear, my mouse and keyboard are connected via USB and work fine.

Any idea how to solve this issue? None of the suggestions I found on the internet have any effect.

usb

6 Answers

  1. Solution 1: Try the Disks program (if you run Ubuntu with a GUI).

    (check that the gnome-disk-utility package is installed) (make sure that udisks2 package is installed)

    Hit SUPERA to open the Application Lens and type Disks in the Search Applications field.

    (SUPER is probably the key with the Windows icon.)

    In Disks you can play with the automount options. ......

    For example:

    Disks Program

    You have to click on the little icon with the two gears and choose 'Edit Mount Options'.

    Mount Options

    Solution 2: Using the CLI (for a headless installation)

    Step 1. Check the blockdevices and the file systems that are assigned to those block devices.

    lsblk

    lsblk

    Here you see the blokdevice sdb with partition /sdb1. But it's not mounted. There's no file assigned to it.

    Step 2. What kind of device is sdb?

    sudo lshw

    or

    sudo lshw | less

    lshw

    So the USB stick - the block device /sdb - has the logical name /dev/sdb. And the FAT32 filesystem on that stick has the logical name /dev/sdb1.

    Step 3. Mounting the USB-stick

    We will mount /dev/sdb1 to /media/usbstick

    sudo mkdir /media/usbstick

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbstick

    Read the manpage of mount for other options.

    Step 4. Did it work?

    lsblk

    lsblk 2

    Yes, we can see that the filesystem on the USB stick is mounted to /media/usbstick

    Addendum : if there are no logical names like /dev/sdb, you should first create them. See this information about setting up and controling loop devices with the losetup command

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  2. sudo lsusb will tell you what USB devices Linux detects. Whether a USB storage device mounts, or is detected, are separate issues. sudo lsusb -v will give verbose output, possibly more information than you want if the OS truly doesn't recognize the device.

    Alternatively, you could compare the lists of devices in /dev before and after plugging in the USB device. There are many ways to do it; I would probably just use:

    ls -l /dev/* | wc -l

    This will give you a number of recognized devices. Doing it before and after plugging in a device will tell you if the OS assigned the device in /dev/.

    Another option would be to look at what is happening in dmesg when you plug in the USB device. dmesg may tell you things like how a device failed.

    If the USB device you are having trouble mounting, is on the lsusb list, then you can try mounting the device. At this point it would be good to know the filesystem type. sudo fdisk -l will tell you the filesystem type, in the form of an ID. You may have to look up the ID number. There are lots of references online for that. Once you know the device listing, that is, /dev/hda1 and the filesystem type you can try to mount the device manualy with the mount command.

    sudo mount /dev/hda1 /home/user/Desktop/whereEver

    You may have to make sure the location you want to mount the device on exists. If the OS recognizes the file system, then mount might just work if the file system is not a native file system type; you may have to specify flags for mounting.

    Post back your output from dmesg (not all of it, only from around when the USB device is plugged in), and sudo lsusb.

    You may find Linux / UNIX: Device files helpful if trying to determine device type.

    I am writing this assuming all your unrecognized devices are block type devices. There are many ways to approach this type of problem and many possible solutions. More specific information is needed to provide a solution.

    There are also many GUI applications that can do the same thing. You might try looking for the plugged-in hardware in the "Disk Utility".

    • 79

  3. Manually Mount a USB Drive

    A USB storage device plugged into the system usually mounts automatically, but if for some reasons it doesn't automount, it's possible to manually mount it with these steps.

    1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to run Terminal.
    2. Enter sudo mkdir /media/usb to create a mount point called usb.
    3. Enter sudo fdisk -l to look for the USB drive already plugged in, let's say the drive you want to mount is /dev/sdb1.

    4. To mount a USB drive formatted with FAT16 or FAT32 system, enter:

      sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usb -o uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=137

      OR, To mount a USB drive formatted with NTFS system, enter:

      sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/usb

    To unmount it, just enter sudo umount /media/usb in the Terminal.

    source

    • 19

  4. You can use one of the following commands to get information details about mounted devices: all different commands are used to getting different information in different manners, results ...

    • dmesg
    • sudo fdisk OR sudo fdisk -l
    • sudo blkid
    • lsblk
    • mount
    • lsusb
    • usb-devices
    • df -h
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  5. You only mention one storage device type - usb stick. Whenever usb devices don't mount correctly check that you don't have package called usbmount installed. If it is, remove it and life should be back to normal after that (you might need to restart).

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  6. I too had similar situation where my pen drive became invisible.

    I solved it by using the Ubuntu utility program named Disks. Inside the disk tool, the pen drive was visible. I clicked on the gear icon inside disk(make sure that you have selected the correct device) and the used the format partition option with FAT (compatible with all systems and devices)

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