partitions manually added to fstab do not show in 'Computer'

[paul marwick]

Hoary Preview - adding partitions to fstab (with noauto in the options) does not
result in the creation of an icon in the Computer object. Such partitions must
be mounted manually from the command line and even then, no icon for the mounted
partition appears on the desktop. This is very annoying on a multi-boot machine.

Clean install on an IBM Thinkpad T23, Hoary Preview. The machine has Win2K Pro
plus OS/2 4.5 installed. Partitions for these operating systems were not added
to fstab during the install, and manually adding them has the behaviour
described above.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I can reproduce this. It works fine if the mount point is somewhere in /media,
but it does not work if it is e. g. /mnt. Can you confirm this?

[paul marwick (paul-marwick)]

Created an attachment (id=1693)
T23 fstab with extra partitions added

[paul marwick (paul-marwick)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> I can reproduce this. It works fine if the mount point is somewhere in /media,
> but it does not work if it is e. g. /mnt. Can you confirm this?

Doesn't seem to make a difference here. I've tried both /mnt and /media. In one
case, I did manage to get an icon to appear in Computer, but one did not appear
on the desktop when the partition was mounted. I've just changed fstab to /media
again, created the mount directories and tried again, but same result - no
object appears in Computer and when the partition is mounted manually, no icon
appears on the Desktop

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Nevermind, I found the reason for this. Will be fixed soon.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

 hal (0.4.7-1ubuntu13) hoary; urgency=low
 .
   * Added debian/patches/ubuntu-06-harddisk-volumes.patch:
     - fdi/90defaultpolicy/storage-policy.fdi: If a volume has an empty
       fsusage, set it to "filesystem" to work around the fact that the
       non-root hald cannot read harddisk partitions.
     - libhal-storage/libhal-storage.c: Do not declare a volume as invisible if
       hal does not know the file system (hald cannot read harddisk
       partitions).
     - Ubuntu #7641

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

*** Bug 13939 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Warren Ernst (warren-warrenernst)]

Are you saying that "hal (0.4.7-1ubuntu13) hoary" is supposed to fix this, or
that it still has the problem?

This is the version that I have right now, and I am still experiencing this
problem.

Sorry if I'm totally misunderstanding this...

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Are you saying that "hal (0.4.7-1ubuntu13) hoary" is supposed to fix this, or
> that it still has the problem?

Actually I included a patch that should make it work (it works fine for me now).

> This is the version that I have right now, and I am still experiencing this
> problem.

Oh well... reopening it. But it works perfectly for me now, so I cannot
reproduce this problem any more.

[Julius Caro (julius-caro)]

I still can't see my partition in Computer (nor in the places menu or the
desktop). I'm running updates daily, and sometimes after it finishes updating
packages, the partition it's shown, but it would be gone again in the next
session start.

This is the line I have in /etc/fstab
/dev/hda1 /win ntfs umask=0222 0 0

I also have the latest version of hal installed (according to apt-get)

[Gordo (gordo)]

Same here, I cannot see my windows partitions mounted in /media/windows the
partition is /dev/hda2 and I have the following line in my fstab:

/dev/hda2 /media/windows ntfs umask=0222 0 0

Everything worked perfectly in Warty. I am running Hoary preview and update
daily. And yes I can access the partition manually throught /media/windows.
Hopefully this gets fixed before Hoary final is released.

[Gordo (gordo)]

Sorry after reading my comment above I feel I should clarify. Yes, I can see the
partition, I just don't get any desktop icons for it or icons in the computer
window for it like happened in Warty.

Thanks,
Gord

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Hmm, this works perfectly for me now. Can you please do

  lshal > lshal.txt

and attach lshal.txt here?

[Juan Jose Amor Iglesias (jjamor)]

Also works for me after upgrading, however partition is shown as "10 Gb Hard
Drive" instead of mount point used. But this doesn't matter (except when you
have more than one partition mounted on demand)

[paul marwick (paul-marwick)]

(In reply to comment #8)

> Oh well... reopening it. But it works perfectly for me now, so I cannot
> reproduce this problem any more.

I upgraded to hal 0.4.7-1ubuntu13. At that point, I started getting icons in the
Computer object for my extra partitions. However, the naming is strange - I
currently have a 4GB HPFS partition and a 1.3GB FAT32 partition listed in fstab.
In Computer, they appear as 4.0G Hard Drive and 1.3G Hard Drive. When mounted,
the naming changes (4.0G Hard Drive: 4.0G Media). The only indication of the
actual mount is shown when a Nautilus window is opened on them. This is
confusing to say the least...

Other problems - there is still no icon for either of them appearing on the
desktop when they are mounted, nor does the Warty behaviour of openeing a
browser window when they're mounted work.

I've tried both /mnt and /media as parents for the mount directories. Doesn't
alter the behaviour listed above. However, it seems that when the parent is
/media, the partitions are often automounted on startup, even though both have
'noauto' in their fstab entries. In addition, the icons in Computer are often
not updated in real time - in order to show state changes, Computer must be
closed and reopened.

If there is any other information I can supply, please let me know.

[Kai Hissbach (powder-finger)]

I found out that restarting dbus-1 with

/etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart

causes all my partitons to show up in "Computer".

maybe there is something wrong with the sequence of the init scripts?

[Warren Ernst (warren-warrenernst)]

(In reply to comment #15)
> I found out that restarting dbus-1 with
>
> /etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart
>
> causes all my partitons to show up in "Computer".

I can confirm the same results for my system. Here's the output:

root@cria3u:/home/wernst # /etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer: [ ok ]
 * Stopping system message bus: [ ok ]
 * Starting system message bus: [ ok ]
 * Starting Hardware abstraction layer: [ ok ]
root@cria3u:/home/wernst #

And yes, I updated yesterday and today too.

Good work on this; let's hope there's a permanent fix to be had as a result...

[Warren Ernst (warren-warrenernst)]

Just dist-upgraded again this morning, two days before final release.

This bug is still there. Restarting dbus gets the drives visible in the Computer
window again, as with Warty.

This seems to be a problem with the order in which modules are loading, much
like the the DMA for Optical Drives being disabled.

I see that the status of this bug is "NEEDINFO." Exactly what additional
information is needed?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This could in fact be an artifact of #6879. Can you please take a look whether
hal indeed needs very long to start up for you? I. e. do you get many timeouts
in dmesg and hal logs?

[paul marwick (paul-marwick)]

(In reply to comment #18)
> This could in fact be an artifact of #6879. Can you please take a look whether
> hal indeed needs very long to start up for you? I. e. do you get many timeouts
> in dmesg and hal logs?

No sign of it here. There are no timeout messages at all. The only thing I've
had to change is to move S07hdparm to S50hdparm in order to get the DVD seen. In
its original position, I get 'no such device' messages. Other than that, there
are no apparant slowdowns in the boot process at all.

[Adolfo González Blázquez (infinito)]

Same problem here.
Unless I do a "/etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart" I've got strange names (10G Media)
and no desktop icons for mounted volumes.
After restarting dbus everything seems ok.

Using hoary up-to-date.

[Juan Jose Amor Iglesias (jjamor)]

I can confirm previous comment. Restarting dbus-1, nautilus behavior is similar
to Warty (mountpoint instead of strange names and so on).

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

(In reply to comment #21)
> I can confirm previous comment. Restarting dbus-1, nautilus behavior is similar
> to Warty (mountpoint instead of strange names and so on).

Since this was confirmed by two people, this really seems to be an artifact of
the "slow hal startup" bug, closing as a duplicate.

This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 13233.

[Kai Hissbach (powder-finger)]

(In reply to comment #22)
> (In reply to comment #21)
> > I can confirm previous comment. Restarting dbus-1, nautilus behavior is similar
> > to Warty (mountpoint instead of strange names and so on).
>
> Since this was confirmed by two people, this really seems to be an artifact of
> the "slow hal startup" bug, closing as a duplicate.
>
> This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 13233.

wow, I think that is a bit too fast.
when I read the two "confirmations" correctly, they seem to confirm that
restarting dbus-1 results in the partitions to show up.

I never had any problems with hald taking to much time on boot. However I did
install 2.6.11, but the problem with the partitions not showing up remains.
I would definetly vote for reopening this bug.

If I can supply any information to fix this (log files etc.) please let me know.

[Adolfo González Blázquez (infinito)]

> Since this was confirmed by two people, this really seems to be an artifact of
> the "slow hal startup" bug, closing as a duplicate.

I don' think it's a problem with slow hal startup on boot, 'cause every time I
logged into a gnome-session i have to restart dbus to get the mounted volumes
shown on desktop (and recognized by nautilus and places menu).

[Adolfo González Blázquez (infinito)]

If it helps, nautilus shows the volume icons when system message bus is
stopping. This is the secuence:

infinito@soho:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart
Password:
 * Stopping Hardware abstraction layer: [ ok ]
 * Stopping system message bus: (Icons on desktop!) [ ok ]
 * Starting system message bus: [ ok ]
 * Starting Hardware abstraction layer: [ ok ]

[Gordo (gordo)]

(In reply to comment #22)
> (In reply to comment #21)
> > I can confirm previous comment. Restarting dbus-1, nautilus behavior is similar
> > to Warty (mountpoint instead of strange names and so on).
>
> Since this was confirmed by two people, this really seems to be an artifact of
> the "slow hal startup" bug, closing as a duplicate.
>
> This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 13233.

This is NOT a duplicate of 6879 as my computer boot Ubuntu Hoary very quickly as
it should and my Windows partitions NEVER EVER show up on the desktop on in the
computer window even though I can access them every other way. Still waiting and
hoping that this very annoying bug will get fixed in some future update.

[Rick Wood (rickwood)]

I recently installed hoary. I've got this same problem. It doesn't appear to
be an artifact of #6879, as my computer seems to boot at a reasonable speed
(about 1 min 15 seconds from grub screen to completely booted to desktop). If
you'd like more information or like me to test something that may identify the
root cause of this problem, please let me know. A little information:

E-Machines PC
2.6 GHz Celeron
60 Gig & 160 Gig 7200 rpm ATA100 drives
Gyration wireless keyboard & mouse combo
DVD/CDRW combo drive
DVD burner
8-in-1 media reader (works fine, by the way, as do jump drives)
Partitioned as follows
   hda1 - WinXP
   hda5 - Mandriva (Reiser)
   hda6 - Ubuntu (Reiser)
   hdb1 - swap
   hdb5 - vfat data partition

[Alexander Dietz (aledie)]

Same problem here, a icon for a FAT partition doesn't appear neither on my
desktop, nor in Computer or Places.
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus-1 restart - helps just till the next reboot.
After restarting my Computer I have to restart dbus-1 again to get the device
icons. I think my notebook isn't
that slow either:
Toshiba Satellite A50
Processor: Celeron M, 1.5 Ghz
HD: 40 Gbyte RAM: 512 Mb

[Alexander Dietz (aledie)]

I found a strange solution for the problem at:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=21508&page=3&pp=10
"i have a tricky way to show up windows drivers on your desktop in Hoary. What
you can do is that
remove '/' in front of dev of your windows partition."

Ok, I tried to edit my /etc/fstab and removed the slash
dev/hda5 /media/windows vfat umask=000 0 0

so far it was the only successful way to keep the windows drive's icons on my
Desktop/in Computer/Places
permanently. Can you tell why it worked?

[ChristofferS (ubuntu-curo)]

Is this fixed or not?

I am using Hoary and to get my Windows partitions shown on my desktop and in
Computer I have to:

* Boot into Windows - then boot into Ubuntu

Only when I have used Windows and then booting Ubuntu they are shown.

I hope this helps.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This works just fine in current dapper, as well as it did in Breezy. I created a
test vfat partition, and as soon as I add

  /dev/hdc2 /media/testvfat vfat defaults,user,noauto 0 0

to /etc/fstab, 'testvfat' instantly appears in the computer place, the 'Places
menu', and so on. This works for mountpoints that are not below /media, too.

Can you please verify that it works for breezy/dapper? (Just test a live CD if
you do not want to upgrade your Hoary system.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

No answer to my last questions, and it works just fine on breezy and dapper, so I close this for now. Please complain loudly if you still have trouble with this.

[Adolfo González Blázquez (infinito)]

It's this one the same as this Dapper bug?

For me, to get the partitions on desktop and computer:///, i have to do the /etc/init.d/dbus restart stuff, using up-to-date Dapper.

https://launchpad.net/bugs/32628