USB drives not being recognized by the Device Notifier

[Edwin Marqe]

Hi all,

Currently I'm facing a problem with the Device Notifier, which doesn't show
the mounted devices of my users. My scenario is a bit complex, but
resuming, my aim is to have one server and multiple thin-clients connected
to it and use KDE. Only the server runs KDE sessions and it creates one per
user. All this works fine, but when one of these clients stick in an USB
drive, even if it actually is mounted, the user can browse thru it, etc,
it's not shown up on the 'Device Notifier' applet.

My KDE version is 4.3.4 (yes, I'm aware it's an old version, but due to the
above explaination, which uses a very specific hardware configuration, this
version of KDE is a must).

Making some tests, turns out that the USB drive is recognized by the
'udisks' tool, so if I call 'udisks --dump' I see this information related
to the device:

Code: Select all
<https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=121940&sid=be5c70b8d28ba04cde88bba8a487093b#>added:
   /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/utdisk1
Showing information for /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/utdisk1
  native-path:                 /sys/devices/virtual/block/utdisk1
  device:                      251:1
  device-file:                 /dev/utdisk1
    presentation:              /dev/utdisk1
  detected at:                 mié 09 jul 2014 13:05:18 WEST
  system internal:             0
  removable:                   1
  has media:                   1 (detected at mié 09 jul 2014 13:05:18 WEST)
    detects change:            1
    detection by polling:      1
    detection inhibitable:     1
    detection inhibited:       0
  is read only:                0
  is mounted:                  0
  mount paths:
  mounted by uid:              0
  presentation hide:           0
  presentation nopolicy:       1
  presentation name:
  presentation icon:
  size:                        4284481536
  block size:                  512
  job underway:                no
  usage:
  type:
  version:
  uuid:
  label:
  partition table:
    scheme:                    mbr
    count:                     1
  drive:
    vendor:
    model:
    revision:
    serial:
    WWN:
    detachable:                0
    can spindown:              0
    rotational media:          Yes, unknown rate
    write-cache:               unknown
    ejectable:                 0
    adapter:                   Unknown
    ports:
    similar devices:
    media:
      compat:
    interface:                 (unknown)
    if speed:                  (unknown)
    ATA SMART:                 not available

added:     /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/utdisk1p1
Showing information for /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/utdisk1p1
  native-path:                 /sys/devices/virtual/block/utdisk1/utdisk1p1
  device:                      251:2
  device-file:                 /dev/utdisk1p1
    presentation:              /dev/utdisk1p1
    by-id:                     /dev/disk/by-uuid/25E6-DE47
  detected at:                 mié 09 jul 2014 13:05:23 WEST
  system internal:             0
  removable:                   0
  has media:                   1 (detected at mié 09 jul 2014 13:05:23 WEST)
    detects change:            0
    detection by polling:      0
    detection inhibitable:     0
    detection inhibited:       0
  is read only:                0
  is mounted:                  1
  mount paths:             /tmp/SUNWut/mnt/nicolas/noname
  mounted by uid:              0
  presentation hide:           0
  presentation nopolicy:       1
  presentation name:
  presentation icon:
  size:                        4284481536
  block size:                  512
  job underway:                no
  usage:                       filesystem
  type:                        vfat
  version:                     FAT32
  uuid:                        25E6-DE47
  label:                       USB20FD
  partition:
    part of:                   /org/freedesktop/UDisks/devices/utdisk1
    scheme:                    mbr
    number:                    1
    type:                      0x0c
    flags:
    offset:                    24576
    alignment offset:          0
    size:                      4284481536
    label:
    uuid:
On the other hand, the 'solid-hardware list' command (which seems to be the
KDE's hardware control tool) doesn't list this device, which I guess is the
problem. I also tried sticking the USB device to the server instead of the
client, and it gets mounted and notified. So it's just the case where the
user sticks in the USB drive into the thin-client and it gets mounted this
way where it it's not shown.

Being stuck at this situation, I'd like to ask some questions to debug this:

1) What mechanism uses the 'Device notifier' to work? I mean, is it
listening to HAL/UDEV/... and whenever something changes, it shows it up?
2) Is there a way to manually notify a storage device, so it's shown upon
some user's action to force it being shown?

Any help related with this will be very appreciated.

Thanks!
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