Can't sudo-chmod new card reader: Problem by-passed!

[T J Tulley]

Having installed my new Fujifilm DCR2-161 card reader (see Hardware Support forum, thanks to Mr Blue), now I can't write to it. I believe this forum is the correct place to seek help for this, as a software problem.

The card reader mounts automatically when connected after the system boots and appears as /media/CardReader, represented by a Desktop icon "2.1 GB Media" which corresponds to the size of the inserted xD Picture Card. If a different size is inserted, that is shown. The PC will not boot or resume from hibernation with the card reader connected.

In terminal, after cd /media, the command $ ls -l produces a response which includes the line:
drw-r--r-- 3 root root 8192 1970-01-01 01:00 CardReader

and this is not changed by the command: $ sudo chmod 666 /media/CardReader
which appears to be accepted.

CardReader is owned by root and is in group root: the alternative comand $ sudo chgrp plugdev /media/CardReader
is not permitted. Nor is $ chown theo /media/CardReader

All three commands produce the same responses whether entered from / or from /media in terminal.

Please: How can I write to my card reader? I want to use it to display selected pictures in my digital photo frame.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks Mr Blue: You're leading me into deep water!

gconf-editor is a fascinating facility, but its Help and Manual don't tell me the meanings of key settings.

Where can I find explanations of nosuid, noatime, relatime, and various other things I see in Mount Options?

Evidently gconfig-editor lets me change them, but my efforts so far have just resulted in the following response in the terminal:
theo@TJT4Elyssa /media/CardReader $ gconf-editor
WARNING: NS_ENSURE_SUCCESS(rv, rv) failed: file Yelper.cpp, line 107
(gnome-help:7261): Yelp-WARNING **: Yelper initialization failed for 0x822f6a0
WARNING: NS_ENSURE_SUCCESS(rv, rv) failed: file Yelper.cpp, line 107
(gnome-help:7369): Yelp-WARNING **: Yelper initialization failed for 0x822f6a0

Evidently I was being too ambitious, but the above looks as though nothing has happened yet. Presumably any changes will only come into effect after a re-boot? I did make a modest change as you suggested (userid=1 - which I presume is me) and re-booted but this didn't show any change.

It looks as though I need to edit the Mount Options of the Drive and Volumes - currently the gconf-editor screen is showing under drives:
/system/storage/drives/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_storage_serial_Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE_000000009144_0_1
which is the identity of my card reader. (I see that in /var /syslog when it is installed).

Under Volumes I see:
/system/storage/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_volume_part1_size_16363008
/system/storage/volumes/_org_freedesktop_Hal_devices_volume_part1_size_2096892416
which are the 2 possible xD picture cards - revealed by their sizes - though only one can be installed.

For either of these there are settings for /fstype_override, mount_options and mount_point - the latter being /media/CardReader. That is also the mount point of the card reader itself - there may be some problem there. The values currently inserted for mount options are probably not usable. I guess that possible key values appear for various items in the table produced by the command $ df -h.

[T J Tulley]

Thanks again Mr Blue. Yes, I did see the gconf-editor window and navigated as you suggested - and set uid=1 - evidently that should be 1000.

But of course I wanted to explore this new tool more fully - I would like to understand these mysterious keys which I first saw, as I said, (wrongly!) in the df -h table. They also show in the Properties/Volume/Mount-options of many objects, and if I can understand them I should be able to make intelligent entries under Settings there.

Now I have looked at it again, and realise that I should have quoted /etc/fstab as the other place where keys are seen - not df -h.

I had already set userid= (leaving it blank) - now I have set uid=1000 for the two "volumes" i.e.xD Picture Cards - the actual storage places. It looks to me as though I should make corresponding changes in /etc/fstab.

I am trying copying the Mount options settings which give me read/write permissions in my partition sdd1. These are:
rw nosuid nodev noatime relatime user_id=0 group_id=0 default_permission allow_other.

The changes made by gconf-editor show in the Settings which will come into effect after a re-boot, not immediately.
I shall send this now and shut down, and wait until the morning before I look at the results.

[T J Tulley]

Good morning Mr Blue.

By now this is moving towards a new topic. Last night in the keys for vfat I set uid=1000 (after verifying id theo, which responded with a long string, beginning with uid=1000{theo} gid=1000{theo} - and much more) but this morning there is no change in the settings of my card reader - I connect it after booting, then it reports can't mount, I command sudo mount /dev/sdf1 /media/CardReader and it mounts.

This is strange because /etc/fstab includes the line:
/dev/sdf1 /media/CardReader auto rw,user,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

In Properties/Volume it is identified as a removable hard disk, filesystem vfat (was msdos), Mount Point /media/CardReader, and in Mount Options the keys stated are: rw relatime fmask=0022 dmask=0022 codepage=cp437 iocharset=iso8859-1 - but in Settings those which I set last night are shown - these were supposed to come into effect at the next mount, according to the text there but evidently they haven't.

ls -l still shows the same permissions and ownership (drwxr-xr-r 3 root root which can't be changed to 777 although the command to do so is apparently accepted, and sudo chown theo /media/CardReader is not permitted.

Going back to gconf-editor, the values I set last night are still there.

Soon I hope to open a new topic: 'Configuration problems' or similar, in this forum. Thanks for the introduction.

[T J Tulley]

Wow! Thanks a lot: I've pasted your suggestion into /etc/fstab, so I hope the next boot will be correct, and I've pasted your second suggestion into a command line (after umount-ing CardReader) and now I'm the owner, with permissions 751.

However, it still doesn't respond to theo@TJT4Elyssa /media $ sudo chmod -R 775 /media/CardReader - why should that be? It doesn't matter since I can now write to it, but I like to understand what's happening. The odd thing is that the command appears to be accepted - but the permissions are unchanged when ls -l is repeated.

I've a long learning curve ahead now you've introduced me to gconf-editor. I went to desktop/gnome/volume_manager in that, and found cheese which operates webcams (some - not mine) and xsane which operates scanners (some, not mine).

However, I see that there is a later Wine in the repository and I have installed and must master that.