Ubuntu
pmount package

Phantom pmounted usbdisk

Bug #79152 reported by Robert Persson
8
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
pmount (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: pmount

I inserted an sdcard into the cardreader on our edgy box and successfully copied the pictures etc. (around 400MB) to the hard disk. But after this things started getting weird.

I deleted the pictures using nautilus, expecting them to be moved to trash, but when I mouseovered the trash thingy I got the "No items in trash" popup. I did a right-click-->Properties on the usbdisk icon and found I had about 1.5 MB on the card, which is what I would have expected after the trash had been cleared.

Then I took out the card, put some more photos on it and reinserted it. The new photos didn't show up, but when I selected view-->Show-hidden-files I found all the deleted images etc. (400MB) still in the trash folder.

I put the card back in the camera to double check that the new images were in fact on the disk, which they were. Then I reinserted the card in the computer. Still no luck. The phantom data was still there according to both Nautilus and Midnight Commander. I could even delete one of the phantom directories as if it were real.

Nothing I did could make the apparent contents of the card match the real contents.

Eventually I ran "umount /media/usbdisk". This got rid of the phantom contents, but then I could not get the disk to remount. This may have been because I didn't remember correctly which device it was, but I'm pretty sure it was /dev/sdb1. Instead I got a "No medium found" message.

Revision history for this message
Robert Persson (ireneshusband) wrote :

In my last paragraph I should have explained more fully that I tried to remount the disk by running "mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk" after the disk failed to be remounted automatically.

Revision history for this message
Robert Persson (ireneshusband) wrote :

Since I submitted the bug report I tried opening gThumb and it detected the new photos. Then when I looked at the usbdisk in nautilus the correct directory listing was there too. The first time I inserted the card and was promplted with the message saying that there were photos I dismissed it because I keep other data on the card as well as photos. I don't know if that made a difference.

There is something really confusing going on here and I'm not quite sure what it is because I am confused.

Revision history for this message
Vincent Fourmond (fourmond) wrote :

Just for information, you need to umount (or pumount) removable devices before unplugging them - if you fail to do so, you leave your drive in an unspecified state. This is most probably the cause of the problem you are describing here. There is nothing pmount could help you with here.

Another information: if you cant mount the device /dev/sdb1, it probably means that the device name changed somehow. Look at the output of dmesg. You should find something similar to the following:

usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access SONY NWWM MEM AAD2 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sda
usb-storage: device scan complete
SCSI device sda: 247169 2048-byte hdwr sectors (506 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 6a 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 247169 2048-byte hdwr sectors (506 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 6a 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1

In this case, the device to pmount is /dev/sda1

Revision history for this message
Daniel T Chen (crimsun) wrote :

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 alpha? (Note: pmount is deprecated. gnome-mount is used instead in GNOME.)

Changed in pmount:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

Changed in pmount:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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