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alexkemp

Member

Registered: 2018-05-14

Posts: 367  

(Fixed) Removable CDROM / DVD / Blue-Ray Devices do not Automount

$ neofetch
   ..,,;;;::;,..                   alexk@ng3 
           `':ddd;:,.              --------- 
                 `'dPPd:,.         OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 6 (excalibur) x86_64 
                     `:b$$b`.      Model: 90BJ008CUK Lenovo H30-05 
                        'P$$$d`    Kernel: 6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64 
                         .$$$$$`   Uptime: 6 hours, 45 mins 
                         ;$$$$$P   Packages: 3248 (dpkg) 
                      .:P$$$$$$`   Shell: bash 5.2.37 
                  .,:b$$$$$$$;'    Resolution: 1920x1080 
             .,:dP$$$$$$$$b:'      DE: Xfce 4.20 
      .,:;db$$$$$$$$$$Pd'`         WM: Xfwm4 
 ,db$$$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`             WM Theme: Default 
:$$$$$$$$$$$$b:'`                  Theme: Clearlooks-Phenix-Sapphire [GTK2/3] 
 `$$$$$bd:''`                      Icons: oxygen [GTK2/3] 
   `'''`                           Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
                                   Terminal Font: Monospace 12 
                                   CPU: AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 Graphics (4) @ 2.200GHz 
                                   GPU: AMD ATI Radeon R4/R5 Graphics 
                                   Memory: 1556MiB / 7362MiB

Somewhere after a successful upgrade to Excalibur and (I think) a kernel update I discovered that, whilst my 2GB USB-Storage was automounted + auto-accessible via Thunar & could be unmounted via GUI, the same was NO LONGER true for CDROM / DVD / Blue-Ray external devices connected to the desktop via USB. iirc the same was true for a Seagate 2TB external FAT32 usb-connected HDD (I may not have checked that one before the fix).

I'm in the middle of preparing for imminent upgrade to kitchen + house & my time is limited, but I checked the Byte Computer that I've been upgrading since January — it needs Chromium + Thunderbird sync and we shall have lift-off — and sure enough that shows the identical problem as the 10-year old Lenovo that I'm working on right now.

After a couple of days of going down rabbit holes on the Byte I transferred back to the Lenovo and hey!, after yet another trip down a rabbit-hole I got a conclusive fix. So here it is:-

Login for me is SLIM, Desktop is xfce4 whilst the File Manager is Thunar. The important thing to realise is that Automount for removable Drives, Devices & Media in that combo is mediated via Thunar and NOT via /etc/fstab, autofs nor any other source. As long as Thunar and it's dependencies are setup correctly life is simple & it just works.

With Thunar open, go:–

• menu:Edit | Preferences

• select tab:Advanced

• (bottom of tab): Volume Management
  [if working, this provides a "Configure" link to the “Removable Drives and Media” setup]

That is the case for me now, but before the fix there was a sickly-coloured background which said:

'gvfs is not available' + a 'Read More' link:

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/unix- … ile_system

which says: "For Debian and its derivatives, the packages “gvfs-backends” and “gvfs-fuse” are required"

That is more than a little sickly for folks like me that tend to stay away from bloated products like gvfs (wiki) virtual filesystem software for the GNOME desktop environment
Here is a before result on a search, with the fix after:

before

$ apt search gvfs | fgrep install
gimp/stable,stable-security,now 3.0.4-3+deb13u8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs-common/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 all [installed,automatic]
gvfs-daemons/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs-libs/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]

after

$ sudo apt install gvfs-fuse gvfs-backends

$ apt search gvfs | fgrep install
gimp/stable,stable-security,now 3.0.4-3+deb13u8 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs-backends/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed]
gvfs-common/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 all [installed,automatic]
gvfs-daemons/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gvfs-fuse/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed]
gvfs-libs/stable,now 1.57.2-2+deb13u1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
rygel/stable,now 0.44.2-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
xfce4-goodies/stable,now 4.20.0 amd64 [installed,automatic]

(CDs + DVDs + Blue-Rays now auto-mount & are accessible) Hooray!

Last edited by alexkemp (Today 15:43:37)

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,449  

Re: (Fixed) Removable CDROM / DVD / Blue-Ray Devices do not Automount

Strangely enough tools like gvfs do their job as intended. I need it on my Cinnamon to connect to my smartphone every now and then.

That is more than a little sickly for folks like me that tend to stay away from bloated products like gvfs (wiki) virtual filesystem software for the GNOME desktop environment

So what is so "bloated" about gvfs? Its from Gnome, ok. But its not the desktop. I recently looked at Gnome again because some people were raving about the desktop, but its not my beer.

Last edited by rolfie (Today 17:09:48)