On 6/6/26 01:46 PM, Chris Ramsden wrote:
On Sat, 2026-06-06 at 16:37 -0400, Cindy Sue Causey wrote:
On Sat, 2026-06-06 at 20:38 +0100, Chris Ramsden wrote:
Asus Zenbook
Debian 13 Trixie
Mate DE
I have just noticed that this computer has stopped recognising USB
thumbdrives.
They are listed in lsusb, but do not appear in my file browser
(caja),
nor in df.
The same machine sees the same USB thumbdrives when booted into
windows, so it appears not to be faulty hardware.
I can't say when this started happening; I haven't plugged in any
USB
thumbdrives for a few weeks.
Hi.. This sounds familiar, like something I experienced with Thunar
ages ago. I can remember finally stumbling upon "Enable Volume
Management" in Thunar's settings. That option specifically references
removable drives, devices, and media.
No clue what triggered mine to fail. Maybe settings became corrupted
during a new debootstrap install or suchly. A glitchy software update
could have been the culprit, too.
Mine's currently unticked meaning I haven't had to enable that
feature
in a long time. Meanwhile, everything I plug in works as expected
these
days.
My thought process in replying is that it might help to try a search
on
keywords like volume management, Debian, and one's personal choice of
file manager.
Maybe it will help... Maybe.
Cindy :)
Afterthought: I tried my own suggested search. DuckDuckGo concluded
by
saying, "While you can use Caja for USB volume management, it might
not
handle automounting and other features as effectively as Dolphin or
other KDE-specific file managers."
For what it's worth: Thunar used to be installable (and thus also
uninstallable) as a stand-alone package regardless of the desktop
environment (e.g. LXDE). Thunar could be used to test if it sees
what's
currently not appearing otherwise.
"Enable Volume Management" setting can be found toward the bottom of:
Edit > Preferences > Advanced (tab)
In enabling my own just now, I see references to mount and auto-run.
THAT would be why mine is not enabled. I can't stand when that
happens
because I have so many various partitions attached in my setup.
But, as I said previously, mine started working again after I messed
with that a few years ago. Either there was a timely software update
(possibly even as a fix to a reported bug) or ticking "Enable Volume
Management" on for a few minutes generated a config file of some sort
in my daily user's home directory.
PPS DuckDuckGo did explicitly reference the Dolphin file manager in
case a user wants to stay as true to KDE applications as possible...
Thanks Cindy, some useful ideas there, but I am doubtful that if it
doesn't appear in df, it's not going to be accessible to higher lever
tools.
I'll try some other file managers.
Based on recent experience, df seems to be concerned only with mounted
file systems.
So if your thumbdrive is not mounting df will not report it.
Bob
