USB drive attaches but doesn't display in Nautilus

[Ward Family]

Hi all,

Any ideas about how to resolve the issue of a USB drive that doesn't appear in Nautilus's Devices panel in the domain to which it is attached?

Best, Pat

PS: if this is better suited to the GitHub issues page, just let me know.

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DETAILS

Based on the documentation (https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/usb/), I was able to attach the USB drive to a domain ("usb1") in a dom0 terminal using: qvm-block attach usb1 sys-usb:sda. Running qvm-block a second time seems to confirm the attachment:

     sys-usb:sda      Ultra( )              usb1 (read-only=no, frontend-dev=xvdi)

Assuming that the issue was mounting related, I opened a terminal in usb1 and ran

     mkdir mnt

     sudo mount /dev/xvdi mnt

But that produced the error:

     special device /dev/xvdi does not exist

Running sudo blkid from the usb1 terminal fails to find /dev/xvdi

Any thoughts on what I'm missing here?

[awokd]

Are you sure the USB drive is partitioned and formatted? Check with "fdisk
-l" in sys-usb before qvm-block attaching it somewhere else.

[unman]

Whenever I see this behaviour it's because there's a crash in sys-usb.
It's worth looking there.
Removing the device, killing and restarting sys-usb fixes the problem
for me.

[Ward Family]

Using fdisk -l in sys-usb (prior to attaching elswhere) produces:

     Disk /dev/sda: 28.7 GiB, 30752000000 bytes, 60062500 sectors

     Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

     Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

     I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

     Disklabel type: dos

     Disk identifier: 0x00000000

     Device         Boot Start           End      Sectors     Size  Id   Type

     /dev/sda1                32   60062499   60062468   28.7G   c   W95   FAT32   (LBA)

[awokd]

On Mon, August 27, 2018 11:35 am, Ward Family wrote:
> Using fdisk -l in sys-usb (prior to attaching elswhere) produces:
> Disk /dev/sda: 28.7 GiB, 30752000000 bytes, 60062500 sectors
> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
> Disklabel type: dos
> Disk identifier: 0x00000000
>
>
> Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id
> Type
> /dev/sda1 32 60062499 60062468 28.7G c W95
> FAT32 (LBA)

That looks normal. Try attaching just the partition instead:
qvm-block attach usb1 sys-usb:sda1

Attaching the whole device might have resulted in the partition ending up
on /dev/xvdi1 instead. Running qvm-block by itself after the attach should
tell you what device it's on.

[Daniil Travnikov]

Tell me please, sys-usb creates itself when we setup Qubes or we must create it manually?

[Ward Family]

Also tried attaching the partition with the same result. It's still saying that

"special device /dev/xvdi does not exist" (or xvdi1 as the case may be)

This recurs across a variety of usb external devices, including those without partitions.

[unman]

This is an option on installation.
If you didn't create it before then you can do so manually or by using
salt in dom0:
sudo qubesctl state.sls qvm.sys-usb

Have a look at www.qubes-os.org/doc/usb/

Be warned that the salt formula will hid the usb controllers from dom0 -
if yo use a USB keyboard on boot this is not what you want for obvious
reasons.

unman

[unman]

Please don't top post.

Dod you check the logs on sys-usb to make sure that the process has not
crashed there?