Udev frustration

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

Hi, well I tried to make the move to udev, emerge udev, baselayout etc, put gentoo=nodevfs in the boot loader for kernel 2.6.8-r3, left the devfs and tarball options as yes, am I being a bit thick, I still dont know what I am supposed to do to get an icon appear on my desktop to say "I have recognised your mass storage usb device, click me and browse your files".

Sorry long nights getting this box to work. What do mandrake do to make this happen? what am I missing. Am I going nuts??
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iain

G2k · l33t Joined: 06 Mar 2004 Posts: 672 Location: Rome, Italy

Did you modify your kernel? Did you get rid of devfs support? Did you mount your device? Did you create the directory for the device? Say it's a usb stick, you would have to do something like

TNorthover · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 9:45 am Post subject:

The desktop thing probably depends very much on which desktop you're using -- kde, gnome, or whatever. Do you know which it is?

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

KDE 3.3
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iain

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

here is my fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-src/rc-scripts/etc/fstab,v 1.14 2003/10/13 20:03:38 azarah Exp $
#
# noatime turns off atimes for increased performance (atimes normally aren't
# needed; notail increases performance of ReiserFS (at the expense of storage
# efficiency). It's safe to drop the noatime options if you want and to
# switch between notail and tail freely.

# <fs> <mountpoint> <type> <opts> <dump/pass>

# NOTE: If your BOOT partition is ReiserFS, add the notail option to opts.
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 noauto,noatime 1 1
/dev/sda3 / ext3 noatime 0 0
/dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/sdb /mnt/usbstick auto noauto,umask=000,user 0 0

# NOTE: The next line is critical for boot!
none /proc proc defaults 0 0

# glibc 2.2 and above expects tmpfs to be mounted at /dev/shm for
# POSIX shared memory (shm_open, shm_unlink).
# (tmpfs is a dynamically expandable/shrinkable ramdisk, and will
# use almost no memory if not populated with files)
# Adding the following line to /etc/fstab should take care of this:

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

then in console, i type as suggested but get error wrong fs type, I have vfat module loaded yet no joy, is sdb correct for usb stick, how do I find out what is assigned to the stick?
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iain

Pink · Veteran Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 1062

Your best bet is to read the Gentoo guide here.

This is a very basic intro but the important thing to see are the two links at the bottom of the guide: the Udev Primer and the writing udev rules links.

You need to read these carefully and slowly. They may seem long and fairly complicated but they are very intuitive and go through all the basics.

The way suggested by G2k is the 'old' devfs way of mounting things and you should try to get some of your own rules so when you plug in a usb device it is always in the same place in /dev, such as /dev/mp3 or /dev/usbstick, etc.

Here is one line from my own udev rules:

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

ok nearly there, when I now type mount etc I get

cant read superblock?
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iain

Pink · Veteran Joined: 24 Jul 2003 Posts: 1062

TNorthover · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 10:49 am Post subject:

There's a fairly similar thread going on over here that may help you get started, because you've got to get the stick working in the first place before you can worry about kde detecting it. It includes a link to the HOWTO here which you should probably consider following if you haven't already.

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

how can I actually check in a booted system if I am using udev or not?
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iain

TNorthover · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 11:50 am Post subject:

iainvt · Guru Joined: 12 Sep 2004 Posts: 462 Location: UK

bash-2.05b$ ps ax | grep dev
824 ? S<s 0:00 udevd
7501 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/devfsd /dev
8267 pts/1 S+ 0:00 grep dev
bash-2.05b$

would this mean udev then?
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iain

TNorthover · Posted: Sat Sep 25, 2004 5:37 pm Post subject:

That would mean both are running. I've heard that gento=nodefvs doesn't work in 2.6.8 or something, so the way to get rid of it is to remove it from the kernel (keeping a menu option in grub for your old kernel just in case, of course).

If you do that, then devfs shouldn't appear at all in ps, and you'll be completely on udev.

I'd like to clarify what stage you're at. Have you got it mounting at all, and just trying to get kde to work, or does it still not get recognised.

If the latter, try the instructions I gave in the other thread to see what's working, briefly:

1. "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices" and everything's fine there as long as it's not empty.
2. check that the usb device and sda are mentioned in dmesg just after you've plugged the device in (hotplug and udev should take care of inserting modules).
3. If you see no mention in dmesg, try "modprobe usb-storage sd_mod" and check again. If they appear it indicates hotplug isn't working. You shouldn't get any error messages at this stage, definitely tell us if you do.
4. If all above works, try "mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/whatever", and see if it works.