SD card reader mounted by HAL but not VL-HOT

[wcs]

When I insert an SD card into the card reader, HAL detects it and an icon shows up on the desktop.
However, when using VL-HOT, nothing happens.

I tailed dmesg and /var/log/messages and nothing shows up when the card is inserted.
I tried to mount it manually. There is an sdb device.

When running

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /mnt/sd

it gives me the wrong fs or bad superblock message (I tried other fs types as well to no avail).

It is only then that the VL-HOT icon show up on the desktop. The device is sdb1, but it is only created when I try the mount command manually.

Any ideas about why this happens and how to automatize it?
I suspect my girlfriend wouldn't like to type commands in the terminal, and I don't feel like running HAL all the time just for the odd SD card.
Thank you.

[Joe1962]

There are old threads about this, but I don't have time to search right now, so I'l just repeat that card readers do not signal the OS on card insertion, so only a polling daemon can pick it up. However, a refresh of the SCSI bus works most of the time as udev "gets" the new card and calls vl-hot. An option called "media refresh" that does just this was added in a submenu of an icon on the XFCE taskbar since VL 5.8. Give it a test.

NOTE: External USB readers will work automatically when plugged in with the card already inserted. I use one and after unmounting, I simply unplug it to change the card and then plug it back in.

[wcs]

Thank you so much for your help.

I find that the media refresh icon does not change things.
Running "sginfo -l" as user does not produce any output. When run as root, vl-hot promptly displays the icons on the desktop.

Is there a way of having sginfo -l do its job, without the root password? (I would prefer not to give it to my girlfriend, given that she knows hardly anything about linux)

As a solution, I added mount /dev/sdb in /etc/fstab. In this way, the sd card shows up in the mounter applet in xfce. Clicking it does not mount it by itself (the device is actually sdb1), but triggers vl-hot and the icons show up on the desktop. This way, mounting the sd card is a two-step process, kind of halfway between mounting cd's and mounting usb pendrives.

Thank you!

[Joe1962]

I find that the media refresh icon does not change things.
Running "sginfo -l" as user does not produce any output. When run as root, vl-hot promptly displays the icons on the desktop.

That's interesting. Can anybody else test this? I am unable to for now, since I only have VL on a vm. I seem to remember it working on 5.8 though.

Is there a way of having sginfo -l do its job, without the root password? (I would prefer not to give it to my girlfriend, given that she knows hardly anything about linux)

Maybe you could add it to sudoers and change the icon to run with sudo?

[wcs]

Maybe you could add it to sudoers and change the icon to run with sudo?

Works a treat now. Once /etc/sudoers is edited to allow all users to run sginfo without a password, inserting the card and clicking the (edited) media-refresh icon now makes the vl-hot icons show up on the desktop.

Thank you.

[benke]

I have Vector 5.8 and can only manually mount card reader. I tried to plug it to the USB with card inserted and also tried running sginfo -l as root but never get icon on desktop.

What is the "Media-refresh icon" and can I modify somehow /etc/udev/rules.d/10-vl-hot.rules so it can automatically mount it? Thanks in advance.

[Joe1962]

IIRC, though my memory is a little vague about this now) 5.8 SOHO was the first to come with vl-hot built-in, it did not make it in time for the Standard edition. That one had the earlier auto-mount code which was adapted/derived from an existing project outside of VL and wasn't very foolproof. Which edition of 5.8 are you using? Also, there were several updates for vl-hot in the 5.8 lifetime which fixed some bugs, though the newer code for 5.9 and beyond is much better, since it uses udev.

[benke]

5.8 SOHO. Upgraded vl-hot from 1.0.1 to 1.0.4 using gslapt and it works now

[Joe1962]

Great!