MicroSD Card Question

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agordon1050
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MicroSD Card Question

Post by agordon1050 »

I recently purchased an HP Stream 11, with 4G RAM & 32G SSD. Installed Linux Mint 18.2 (x64) on it; the install went well, repartitioning everything well, though the WiFI (Intel 7265) is weird (takes a while to "warm up" upon booting) and the touchpad is horrible, but I assume those are hardware issues.

-I also purchased a 64G MicroSD card for extra storage space, to be left in the MicroSD slot on the computer.
-I made a separate account for the users of the machine, as Standard, No Password, and Guest.
-I can boot into either account, and the MicroSD card appears available (auto mounted) to users of either the side guest account or the initial admin account.
-I can also unmount the drive before logging off, switch to the other user, and click on the device in Nemo in order to mount the drive for the other user (I'm trying to have the drive available to both users.)

I've noticed that, upon the first login after booting, the device mounts as /media/currentusername/disk. Upon switching users, clicking on the device in Nemo returns a "This is not a folder." error. I then have to log back into the original user and unmount in Nemo, in order for the device to be mountable on the other user's account, again, upon clicking on the device in Nemo.

After a few hours of research, I've found this pmount package that might solve this issue. So I have a couple of questions:

1. Is pmount appropriate for "hot-switching" users, so that the MicroSD drive is accessible by whichever user is second to log in? If so, how do I tell Mint to auto mount the drive this way upon the initial booting? Also, on the "hot switch", can the pmount be made automatic as well?

2. If pmount is not appropriate, is there a way to force the drive to be unmounted upon logging out, automatically, so that a click on the device in Nemo will work, upon switching accounts?

Thank you.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
WharfRat

Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by WharfRat »

Hello agordon1050 Image

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum :)

I think the easy solution is to create a /media/MicroSD folder, or whatever you want to call it, and an fstab entry with the user and nofail option to have it mount during boot.

I've never used pmount so I can't speak to that application.
syg00

Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by syg00 »

WharfRat wrote:... and an fstab entry with the user and nofail option to have it mount during boot.
Given the requirements, maybe that should be users (plural).
WharfRat

Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by WharfRat »

syg00 wrote:
WharfRat wrote:... and an fstab entry with the user and nofail option to have it mount during boot.
Given the requirements, maybe that should be users (plural).
That probably would be the better mount option for this situation.
agordon1050
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Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by agordon1050 »

Sorry for the "mounting" confusion, and the bad pun.

I'm not super-familiar with fstab, nor its options, however, if I were to use such an entry, would that preclude me from being able to unmount or remount (on reinsertion), preferably via Nemo, the drive during a given user session, or preclude me from simply having Mint automatically mount the drive on insertion should it be absent upon booting?

Also, would I need to be concerned with permissions on an /media/MicroSD directory, in other words, what masks should I be using?

I have also seen the Disks application; can that be used to set the drive up properly with the suggested mount point, or would PySDM be better?

Thanks again.
WharfRat

Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by WharfRat »

The fstab entry will take precedence over udev/udisks default mount point of /media/$USER/somename

So Nemo will use the mount point dictated in the fstab entry.

As far as permissions go, it depends on the MicroSD card's filesystem.

I'm not familiar with PySDM and I would suggest making the fstab entry and not use the Disks application.
agordon1050
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Re: MicroSD Card Question

Post by agordon1050 »

OK, so I added this to the last line of /etc/fstab:

/dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/microsd1 ntfs auto,nofail,user 0 0

Reboot & brick.

Had to redownload & recreate bootable Mint USB media, remember the "sudo xed" trick as the fstab file was locked down, and after some searching, found the nobootwait option (not shown in the tutorial on fstab on this site), which I added. Was then able to boot, however, upon mounting, Mint returned an NTFS error (a full paragraph about corruption), so I just took the line out of the fstab, and gave up.

I'm not sure if reinstalling Cinnamon would help, but I'm having major touchpad, scroll bar, and selecting text (can't drag to select text in any application) issues, so after my upcoming trip, I'm just going to install Ubuntu, without bothering with the MicroSD drive or second user.

Thanks anyway.
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