[Resolved]Nemo not reading USBs

[SilenceIsG0lden]

I apologize in advance in case this question has come up before; since it's impossible to search the forum for 3-letter words, there's no way to know. (Again, I question the wisdom of disallowing the use of 3-letter search words on a software forum, considering how many things in the computer world have just 3 letters.)

Here's my problem, I tried to read a USB device -- in this case my camera's SD card via an adapter, though I then also tried with just a general USB stick -- in any of my 6 USB ports on my PC. Nemo was unable to see it. (Thunar also -- but I don't really use, it was on my system so I checked it.) I thought at first something was wrong on the hardware/driver side, but SpaceFM had no problems reading it. (I don't use SpaceFM as a file manager, just had it on my system for its file searching capabilities.)

Thinking something got messed up with my system, since I hadn't rebooted in a while, I went ahead and shut it down. To my dismay, nothing had changed on reboot: Nemo still doesn't see any USB device. I ran the Driver Manager, but it didn't find anything that needs attention.

It used to work without a problem, though I can't recall the last time I used a USB device. I apply updates to the system whenever they come.

Anyone have any idea what I could try? I'd be grateful.

[SilenceIsG0lden]

Update: Following the advice of a friend based on what used to work with a similar problem in Windows, I plugged the USB drive in and then rebooted. What do you know, it worked. I was excited. It even worked to plug in a different stick, though, oddly, when I removed one, a ghost entry for it remained in Nemo.

Speaking of ghost entries: there are 4 entries under Devices in Nemo that seem to be ghosts, as whenever I click on them, they bring back errors. Two are referring to generic USB drives, and it says "No such file or directory." The other two say "Unable to mount [long name that's just like any name for a drive before you give it a real name in Nemo]: operation permitted for root only." Sadly, I don't know what that means. I also don't know how long those ghost entries have been there, because I don't often unfurl the Devices drop-down. (Btw, I searched for that error message but was unable to find anything useful.)

To test if that somehow kicked off a full recognition of my USB devices, I rebooted without any USB ports filled (other than my mouse) -- nada. It's all back like it was before; Nemo can't see it.

Just to mention it: Nemo is set to automount whenever anything is plugged in and it has no problems with the drives from my Windows partition. In fact, I believe the automount applies to the whole system, as the background image for cinnamon is pulled from a Windows drive and appears right away when I boot into Linux.

So. Anyone have any other ideas for troubleshooting?

[mikeflan]

Nice post.

I apologize in advance in case this question has come up before; since it's impossible to search the forum for 3-letter words, there's no way to know. (Again, I question the wisdom of disallowing the use of 3-letter search words on a software forum, considering how many things in the computer world have just 3 letters.)

That is a pain. This might help you:
Search on Duck Duck Go
site:linuxmint.com "your terms here"
site:forums.linuxmint.com "usb"

oddly, when I removed one, a ghost entry for it remained in Nemo.

These ghost entries are normal. I just ignore them. They go away eventually. If you want them gone sooner I think there is a way to remove them, but I can't tell you how right now because I don't know.

To test if that somehow kicked off a full recognition of my USB devices, I rebooted without any USB ports filled (other than my mouse) -- nada. It's all back like it was before; Nemo can't see it.

Plug in a USB drive. Then type this in a terminal:

Code: Select all

df -Th

Is the USB drive listed? Post the results here.

Then open 'Disks' (Menu - Disks). Is the USB drive listed on the left? If so, click it. Is that USB drive mounted (black square in left most small box)? If you see a triangle in the left most small box then left click on the triangle to mount the drive. Then check Nemo.

[Qurcus]

I had a USB that wouldn't show in Nemo but would show in the disks application. I my case i had written the USB to zeros with disks app. After i did that it no longer would show up when i plugged it into any computer - neither Windows or Linux. At first i thought the USB was burned out but i found that after formatting the USB with USB formatter it came back to life and then would display in any computer when i plugged it in. Of course you would want to save any information on the USB to a computer before you format it.

[SilenceIsG0lden]

Thank you, @mikeflan -- I had tried the detour via duckduckgo before (it's meanwhile my go-to in-site search function, considering how bad many searches are), but it didn't work, odd.

Thanks also for the suggestions; the results confused me even more!

Plug in a USB drive. Then type this in a terminal:

Code: Select all

df -Th

Is the USB drive listed? Post the results here.

Not sure posting the results here would do anything. In short: no, it's not listed. Only once I run the command again AFTER the next step does it show up.

Then open 'Disks' (Menu - Disks). Is the USB drive listed on the left? If so, click it. Is that USB drive mounted (black square in left most small box)? If you see a triangle in the left most small box then left click on the triangle to mount the drive. Then check Nemo.

No, you guessed correctly: it's not mounted when it appears in Disks. No matter which USB device I use, it doesn't auto-mount, even though the system is set to auto-mount anything plugged in. Of course, once I click on the mount-triangle, it also appears in Nemo. (And, as mentioned above, in the terminal listing.)

Again, this used to work. I don't know how else to initiate auto-mounting of external drives, since they are not always the same and not always present -- I mean, as compared to the hard drives in my PC. If I click on the gear for Mount Options, it still shows "User Session Defaults" set to ON and below (greyed out) only "Show in user interface" is checked off.

Thanks for the work-around via Disks. I just wish I could fix it for good.

[SilenceIsG0lden]

I had a USB that wouldn't show in Nemo but would show in the disks application. I my case i had written the USB to zeros with disks app. After i did that it no longer would show up when i plugged it into any computer - neither Windows or Linux. At first i thought the USB was burned out but i found that after formatting the USB with USB formatter it came back to life and then would display in any computer when i plugged it in. Of course you would want to save any information on the USB to a computer before you format it.

Thanks for your thought, Qurcus, but this happens with all USB storage devices I plug in, not just one.

[Qurcus]

Open Nemo and click on the tab Edit>preferences>behaviour to see if there is a box that should be checked that is not checked. You may have to restart the computer before things will take affect for mounted drives if it's unchecked. I played with it but nothing it did not change anything when i was mounting a USB so you may have to restart the computer to read USB again.

I work on cars sometimes and take pictures before disassembly. I find screenshot works pretty good for disassembly with preconfigured stuff on computers as well - just so i don't forget. There are a lot checked and unchecked in Nemo so it can get confusing without a reference to change it back if it causes other problems.

Idea: Boot Mint from USB and see if Nemo can read other USB's and then check what is checked in the manager.

[SilenceIsG0lden]

Thank you, Qurcus, I very much appreciate your troubleshooting help!
I guess it goes to show how little I actually use USBs these days. I had almost forgotten about this problem. Yet, it seems, it somehow resolved itself -- who know what of the updates in the past month might have had a hand in it. I just tried several ways and there is absolutely no issue anymore with Nemo reading any USB-connected storage device.

Will close this topic.