pcmanfm won't mount drives after udev upgrade

[mecho]

I upgraded udev to unstable version and after the upgrade I had faster system start, but the drive mounting problem appeared. Drives show properly in pcmanfm but when I try to mount them a message appears saying "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Unknown.Failure" . THis massage appears twice followed by another saying there is no mount point.
The funny thing is that if I plug in usb flash drive, pcmanfm mounts it properly and after mounting the flash drive all drives mount just fine.
I downgraded udev and everything works fine again. I am just curious about the interaction between hal and udev and if there is any fix to this problem

[mecho]

I will try to renew this thread. Did anyone successfully managed to upgrade udev without any side effects ?
What I noticed after upgrading udev is that the system boots much faster, but some of the rules in /etc/udev/ are not followed. For example knoppix-post.rules which invokes rebuildfstab and generates all the fstab entries is not executed, fstab is not regenerated anymore and pcmanfm is not even using it after upgrade. It mounts only on mtab.
I am sure there is some scripts which gets broken after this upgrade, but I can not figure which one is it

[kl522]

I vaguely remember having this problem with when using pcmanfm. But I was at that moment, probably attributing it to pcmanfm than udev. I have this tendency to blame pcmanfm for any misbehaviour. Haha.

But now I am using pcmanfm 0.97, and udev version 151-2 ( it was once upon the time the current unstable version). I don't have any of those problems. So I can't say too much about yours because my environment is different. My feedback is non-benchmark. ;)

[mecho]

My working version is 151-2 as well, I am talking about upgrading to 160-1. What would happen if you upgrade :)

[kl522]

Cool. I will upgrade it and see.

[kl522]

I upgraded and did a quick test, it did not give any problem. I could mount almost anything using pcmanfm2. As far as I know, pcmanfm2 does not use 'hal' anymore - that's one of the reasons why the author wanted to write the upgrade.

[mecho]

Thanks a lot kl522 this is useful to know. If I don't find a solution I might have to upgrade to pcmanfm2. I did want to wait a while longer though.

[mecho]

@ kl522

Did you upgrade only udev package or libudev0 and libgudev-1.0-0 as well.
Udev is not dependent on them, but they are part of udev.
I installed pcmanfm2 and it still could not mount with the new udev installed. If you did not update those 2 packages and you decide to do it please back up your system.I don't want to be responsible :)

[kl522]

When I selected udev 160.1, synaptic select libudev0 for me too. 'libgudev-1.0-0' was not selected, so it currently stays at 151-2. I upgrade quite frequently, i know how to deal with the worse case. Don't worry. Worse case I just clean the system portion of the persistent store then I will be back at the last point when I re-mastered.

You pcmanfm2 unable to mount thing, I believe is due to pcmanfm2 does not handle dependencies too well, basically it needs a few other things to be installed or re-installed. Probably it's the gvfs thingie, but I am not so sure. I can't help you too much here but I can only tell you pcmanfm2 is now working just right for me.

[utu]

@mecho

In regard to your very first post #1,
I believe the 'org.freedesktop' messages are related
to what are called a PolicyKit errors. See Wikipedia.

I've run across these in the context of PCManFM and Network Manager.
I believe they represent a 'notification' about a user going
beyond his 'authorization' to do something, like 'sudo' or
'iwconfig' or something like that.

How you adjust or adjust-to these notifications I haven't
found out yet, but it may be the 'coming thing'. I hope it won't
be as bothersome as SElinux.

Let us know if you figure it all out.

[mecho]

It does seem like it is policy error, but unfortunately it is not. All my permissions are correct, I spent all night not sleeping and trying to figure it out with no luck. It seems like the knoppix udev rules are not compatible with the new udev and have to be rewritten, but for this I will have to acquaint myself a bit more with udev and udev rules creation

[mecho]

Another possibility is the new udev has some kind of incompatibility with 2.6.31.6 in Knoppix 6.2 or its headers. I can not be certain unless someone else using 6.2 can confirm this problem with udev upgrade

[kl522]

A number of posts and we ( or rather I ) almost forget about what is your problem. It's not very obvious to me. You could mount usb flash. Just can't mount non-usb-flash. But what other non-usb-flash you are talking about ? Do you mean you can't mount things like usb hard disk and CDROM ?

[mecho]

1 fstab does not get regenerated after udev upgrade
2 If enter manually mount points in fstab they do not get read
3 I can not mount any hard drives - I did not test it with usb sticks
The udev rule in /etc/udev/knoppix-post.rules is the one that starts rebuidfstab at boot and generates mount points which in turn pcmanfm uses with build in mount command to to mount drives. So obviously this rule has not bean read and executed at boot after udev upgrade.
I hope this makes it more clear.

[kl522]

Ok, new info. I did not realise that knoppix has been supporting such features. After what you have posted, with some checking/reading, I finally know what you are talking about.

I think it's very likely what you say are all true but all these are no more important with pcmanfm2. Maybe not immediately, but soon ( as I am using it now, compiled from git source ). With pcmanfm2 and the right version of associated libraries, it's not necessary to scan the disk partitions using knoppix code (scanpartitions and rebuildfstab ) and therefore no need to have udev to execute those knoppix rules and generate /etc/fstab. Pcmanfm2 probably does not even bother with /etc/fstab. Pcmanfm2 has an option to show internal volumes or hide internal volumes. When internal volumes are shown, of course you will then be able to manage them accordingly using the GUI. At the same time, it manages dynamic ( usb ) volumes too.

So in the mean time, maybe you can hold off your udev upgrade. Just wait until the right version of pcmanfm2 hits the street.

[mecho]

Thanks a lot for your research kl522. I am glad that you acknowledged the issue and I am not just paranoid :) I already reverted back to the old udev and will do exactly what you said - wait for pcmanfm2 to mature a little bit more and make the switch

[mecho]

I finally managed to upgrade udev without breaking the system. If anyone is about to make this step - please read this post.
I upgraded all 3 packages: libudev,libgudev and udev to version 160-1
To make the system work I had to edit line 109 of /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. I commented out the original line:
/sbin/udevd --daemon && \
and added below it:
/etc/init.d/udev start 2>/dev/null >/dev/null

So far there are no side effects. FSTAB is recreated properly at every boot. pcmanfm mounts all drives-hard drives and usb
kl522 claims that upgrading udev does not break his system without the modification of knoppix-autoconfig, but unfortunately this is not the case here.
According to me the upgraded udevd fails to start in daemon mode using the original command included in knoppix-autoconfig. If any ill effects show up I will post them here

[kl522]

FSTAB is recreated properly at every boot. pcmanfm mounts all drives-hard drives and usb

Related to the other thread I posted, I would be interested to know if you add a device after you booted into Xwindows, and as soon as it drive object appears on the pcmanfm, you click on it to see if it is mountable.

Example, if you boot from a flash drive, there will be /media/sdaX and /media/sdbX stuff created since boot ( sdaX for internal harddisk and sdbX for the knoppix boot image). Then you add yet another usb thumb drive, by right udev should create a /media/sdcX for you to mount the usb. But 'rebuildfstab' is doing it in the background. I have seen on my computer cases where the drive object appears in pcmanfm, but yet the directory is not created fast enough. I am interested to know if it happens on other computer.

[mecho]

I tested with another flash drive - it took about 10 seconds for the drive to appear in fstab and pcmanfm as /media/sdc1 and is mountable as soon as it appears

[kl522]

Good that it works for you.

In any case, since my environment is fairly different from a standard knoppix now, I have removed both 'hal', 'gvfs' from my system, as they are not needed by the newer pcmanfm. I also have removed /etc/udev/knoppix-post.rules from my system, as it seems to intervene than to help.

I guess that's what Linux is all about. There are just too many ways to accomplish something. Happy knoppix-ing.