# [CLOSED] esata expresscard working... except for FM's.

## w7nz7k

[/topic]esata expresscard for my thinkpad x200. 

It all seems to behave well (I can mount manually) but nor thunar, nor pcmanfm, nor nautilus show the drives that I connect to it on their side panes. My guess is that I am missing softwuare (pcmciautils already installed). Any thoughts?

w7nz7kLast edited by w7nz7k on Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:41 am; edited 1 time in total

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## BradN

Are you mounting these with just root permissions but using a different user in X?  Perhaps you want -o uid=youruser or something like that.

If you're getting them mounted, then you have all the drivers/pcmcia stuff set up.

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## w7nz7k

Thanks for the reply. Sadly, it seems not to be a permissions problem, although drives get mounted in read-only. I tried your advice anyway, no luck. I have been googling around and I think it's it a ata-hotplug issue. I've got AHCI enabled on my BIOS and I would guess the kernel is properly configured. 

Kernel config: http://w7nz7k.pastebin.com/Z7uU3K6f

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## idella4

w7nz7k,

This is not essential, but 

```

CONFIG_AUTOFS_FS is not set

```

set to y or m  might help.  Of more interest, can you post your /etc/fstab /entry for the drive, and also output of 

mount

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## w7nz7k

Thank you for replying!

I installed enabled and installed autofs, no luck  :Sad: 

Since I am trying to hotplug the drive, I would expect not to need fstab configuration (I am trying to get this to behave like usb-drives do). I tried doing it that way but the drive is still read-only with this 

fstab config:

```
/dev/sdb2      /media/backup   auto      noatime,rw,uid=w7nz7k   0 1
```

mount output:

```
/dev/sdb2 on /media/backup type ntfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000)
```

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## idella4

You mean it's stipulated rw in /etc/fstab but it comes up ro???

2 suggestions. change

/dev/sdb2      /media/backup   auto      defaults,uid=w7nz7k   0 1

and 

mount -o remount,rw,exec /dev/sdb2

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## w7nz7k

no luck... they still get mounted read-only! crazy because in /etc/mtab

```
/dev/sdb2 /media/backup ntfs rw,uid=1000 0 0
```

I must insist: I think this is a HOTPLUG issue.

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## Cyker

Your problem is not that the device is not detected then, it's just that it isn't appearing in your WM/DE?

If you plug it in and it appears in dmesg, the hotplug stuff is working.

It sounds like the problem you have is that you don't have a volume manager installed; These will detect when a storage device is plugged in and create a mountpoint in /media and optionally mount it.

I don't know much more than that as these things always need dbus or hal to work and those things are banned from my system.

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## w7nz7k

Closing the thread. Thanks for the replies, led me in the right direction. This seems to be a mounting problem, not the express card nor hotpluging it.

EDIT: Indeed, this solved it:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/HAL#Fixed_drives

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## jw5801

Hmm... did you have to do anything else to get sata connected disks to show up as removable disks in thunar? I've changed the hal settings as described on the wiki, and now they show up fine in pcmanfm and in the open/save file dialogues but not in thunar. Strange...

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## Small_Penguin

I had the same problem and solved it this way:

```

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- -*- SGML -*- -->

<deviceinfo version="0.2">

<device>

  <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.hotpluggable" bool="false">

    <match key="@block.storage_device:storage.removable" bool="false">

      <merge key="volume.ignore" type="bool">false</merge>

    </match>

  </match>

  <match key="@block.storage_device:info.parent" string="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_1101_1622_scsi_host_scsi_device_lun0">

    <merge key="storage.hotpluggable" type="bool">true</merge>

  </match>

</device>

</deviceinfo>

```

Thunar with HAL support is not developed any more. Save above xml code as 99-storage-policy-sata-drives.fdi and put it in /etc/hal/fdi/policy.

You have to find out the parent device of the storage device (your external hard drive) and replace pci_1101_1622_scsi_host_scsi_device_lun0 with it. Use lshal -s -t to print a hierarchy tree, and see lshal --help for further options. Restart hald, changes can be seen immediately without turning off and on the drive. You might have to close all instances of thunar, though.

This is just a quick hack, and you might need to improve it and create more (precise) <match> sections, but it works for me this way and has not caused any troubles so far.

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## jw5801

Works for me! Thanks.

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