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usbmount to http://box/usb doesn't work w/ modern exFAT sticks #654

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holta opened this issue Jan 16, 2018 · 14 comments
Closed

usbmount to http://box/usb doesn't work w/ modern exFAT sticks #654

holta opened this issue Jan 16, 2018 · 14 comments
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enhancement good 1st issue help wanted
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6.5

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@holta
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holta commented Jan 16, 2018 •
edited

Ref #329 "http://box/usb "teacher content" does not appear from USB sticks" [after cold boot]
@holta holta added this to the 6.6-JanFebMch milestone Jan 16, 2018
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holta commented Jan 29, 2018 •
edited

Moving to IIAB 6.5 for discussion. This is starting to affect teachers in Mexico who can no longer use IIAB to display/share their content, as exFAT-formatted 32+ GB memory sticks are becoming mainstream.

@holta holta modified the milestones: 6.6-JanFebMch, 6.5-OctNovDec Jan 29, 2018
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holta commented Feb 4, 2018 •
edited

[affects] teachers in Mexico who can no longer use IIAB to display/share their [USB stick] content, as exFAT-formatted 32+ GB memory sticks are becoming mainstream.

@georgejhunt are you able to confirm this unfortunate behavior?

And/or suggest a path forward if so?

@holta holta changed the title usbmount to http://box/usb does not work with modern exFAT sticks usbmount to http://box/usb doesn't work with modern exFAT sticks Feb 5, 2018
@holta holta changed the title usbmount to http://box/usb doesn't work with modern exFAT sticks usbmount to http://box/usb doesn't work w/ modern exFAT sticks Feb 5, 2018
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holta commented Feb 8, 2018 •
edited

Thursday Community/team call excerpt from http://minutes.iiab.io :

  • @tim-moody wonders if security of exFAT executables is related to these new store-bought 32+ GB sticks failing to display teacher content?
  • @georgejhunt / @floydianslips / others suspect we need to tweak automounting of exfat filesystems — i.e. http://box/usb functionality might/likely start working as soon as we get exfat-formatted sticks to automount (manually mounting them is not a problem today, since IIAB introduced exFAT support late in 2017)
  • @jvonau suggests we might need to add "exfat" to usbmount's own list of filesystems it's supposed to automount
  • @georgejhunt / others ask that we verify this with store-bought exFAT sticks to be sure (not just our own USB sticks, that we've reformatted to exFAT)

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holta commented Feb 8, 2018

Is it possible we just need to add "exfat" to the following line in /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf ?

FILESYSTEMS="vfat ext2 ext3 ext4 hfsplus"

How is this best achieved within roles/usb-lib presumably?

Note To Self: documentation roles/usb-lib/README.rst is very stale and needs to be replaced with http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#Can_teachers_display_their_own_content.3F or similar after we finalize/merge this fix.

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holta commented Feb 8, 2018

Is it possible we just need to add "exfat" to the following line in /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf ?

FILESYSTEMS="vfat ext2 ext3 ext4 hfsplus"

Followup: can we agree to add both "exfat" and "ntfs" above, to avoid complaints from the field?

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holta commented Feb 8, 2018

Worrisome blog post from someone facing this very same "how to automount exfat" obstacle:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/403591/using-usbmount-with-exfat-drives

This other blog post might possibly be more reassuring...contradicting the above :)
http://malatsblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/usbmount-exfat.html

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holta commented Feb 11, 2018 •
edited

Sadly adding "exfat ntfs fuseblk" into this line within /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf does not work:

FILESYSTEMS="vfat ext2 ext3 ext4 hfsplus exfat ntfs fuseblk"

The error (even after reboot) is:

root@box:~# ls /media/usb0
ls: cannot access '/media/usb0': Transport endpoint is not connected

Confoundingly, even while automounting fails, manually mounting exFAT and NTFS drives does in fact work to mount the stick's contents — and also to showcase the USB stick's teacher content (to students) via http://box/usb — e.g. after typing the following:

root@box:~# umount /media/usb0
root@box:~# mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb0

@jvonau
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jvonau commented Feb 11, 2018 via email

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holta commented Feb 11, 2018 •
edited

Time to retire the 10 year old hack that was intended for headless,

I need to test headless-mounting of exfat and ntfs as well, good idea.

Certainly exFAT stick and NTFS drive both show "false positive" confirmation that they've automounted on Raspbian and Ubuntu 16.04:

root@box:~# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    1  63.7G  0 disk
`-sda1        8:1    1  63.7G  0 part /media/usb0
sdb           8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk
`-sdb1        8:17   0   1.8T  0 part /media/usb1
...
root@box:~# blkid
...
/dev/sda1: UUID="46C3-5AB7" TYPE="exfat" PARTUUID="966a3fdf-01"
...
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="My Passport" UUID="F474B7AA74B76DCC" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="0005f107-01"

But the contents of both remain inaccessible (until manual mounting of either stick/drive...)

root@box:~# ls /media/usb0
ls: cannot access '/media/usb0': Transport endpoint is not connected
root@box:~# ls /media/usb1
ls: cannot access '/media/usb1': Transport endpoint is not connected

(Whereas FAT32 sticks/drives indeed do work...)

@holta
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holta commented Feb 12, 2018

I need to test headless-mounting of exfat and ntfs as well, good idea.

Regrettably the same result occurs on headless Raspbian Lite, running IIAB 6.5/master:

  • FAT32 and ext4 drives automount successfully, whereas...
  • exFAT and NTFS again appear to automount (according to lsblk) but then fail to show any drive contents...
root@box:~# ls /media/usb0
ls: cannot access '/media/usb0': Transport endpoint is not connected
root@box:~# ls /media/usb1
ls: cannot access '/media/usb1': Transport endpoint is not connected

Even despite /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf containing:

FILESYSTEMS="vfat ext2 ext3 ext4 hfsplus exfat ntfs fuseblk"

@jvonau suggests polkit (formerly PolicyKit) might be affecting fine-grained user-level permissions, causing this failure? Certainly root can mount exfat and ntfs drives manually!

Likewise he recommends examining detailed logs in /var/log/* (journalctl might help) so the precise mechanics of exfat/ntfs automounting failures can be compared side-by-side with the mechanics of vfat/ext4 automount successes.

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holta commented Feb 14, 2018

2015-centric thread reviewing usbmount's failing to automount ntfs: (thanks @jvonau)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=774149

One alternative approach:
https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/automount-usb-devices-with-systemd/

@georgejhunt
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This reference seems to do he trick: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/41959/automount-various-usb-stick-file-systems-on-jessie-lite. But more testing before a PR

@holta holta mentioned this issue Feb 15, 2018
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@georgejhunt
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I can confirm that ntfs formatted usb sticks also work.

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holta commented Feb 15, 2018 •
edited

I can confirm that ntfs formatted usb sticks also work.

Incredible news.

I've now documented that in our IIAB 6.5 DRAFT Release Notes and FAQ.IIAB.IO

@holta holta closed this as completed Feb 15, 2018
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