Strange behaviour using removable media - Squeeze & Konqueror

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 1. I recently upgraded one of my three computers from Debian Lenny to Squeeze with KDE-Trinity 3.5.13. (The other two computers still have Lenny with KDE 3.5.10.) 2. The default view profile when Trinity Konqueror is loaded is “File Management”. That profile is configured to load Konqueror with two tabs, the first one being “system:/media” and the second one “/home/$USER/docs”, but with the contents of the second tab displayed on the monitor. 3. When a user logs on for the first time, opens Konqueror and clicks on the “system:/media” tab no content is shown. If however the user closes Konqueror, opens it a second time and clicks on the “system:/media” tab a second time, now the tab lists all the “Remote Shares”. Why is this list shown on second and subsequent times of opening Konqueror, but not the first time? 4. This box has three removable media drives installed: a DVD drive, an Iomega Zip 750 drive and a 9 cm floppy drive. Installing a CD or DVD drive causes the “Removable Media KDE daemon” to open in a separate window but also adds another line to the “system:/media” tab which identifies the installed medium by name, e.g., “Trips001”. It is then possible to mount this medium from the “system:/media” tab, read its contents and ultimately either to unmount or eject it. The last two operations cause the identifying line to disappear. 5. Two Zip 750 disks are normally used for backups in this box; but Konqueror does not behave the same way for each one. Installation in the drive of one of the disks will cause a new line to be added to the “system:/media” tab, “ZIP750” which corresponds to the mount point for this drive (UUID=348F-3C8C) established in “/etc/fstab”. It is then possible to mount this medium, read from it, write to it and ultimately unmount it. On unmounting the “ZIP750” line disappears. 6. Installation of the other Zip 750 disk in the same drive opens a *different* new line in the “system:/media” tab. Instead of reading “ZIP750” it reads “752M removable media”. Konqueror will not permit mounting or unmounting this particular Zip 750 disk; it says that the user does not have permission to open this disk and that this device node does not appear in “/etc/fstab”. This disk can however be mounted (and unmounted) in an Xterm. Once mounted in that way it will show up in the “system:/media” tab as mounted and can be read from and written to in that tab. So, why do two Zip 750 disks installed in the same drive behave differently in Konqueror? 7. At this point it occurred to me that the first Zip 750 disk was, so to speak, a virgin disk; whereas the second was not. The second in fact had tarballs of files in the Squeeze box but written to it from a Lenny box. So, I decided to restore the “virginity” of the second by running in the Squeeze box “mkfs.vfat /dev/sda4”, which of course obliterated those files. I then tried in the Squeeze box to mount it both in an Xterm and in the “system:/media” tab of Konqueror; it would not mount at all in either place. I then went back to the Lenny box, logged in as the user whose files are in the Squeeze box and was able to write to this disk backup tarballs of files in the Squeeze box. I took this disk back to the Squeeze box and was now able to open it there in the “system:/media” tab as “750M removable media” and to perform all the usual removable disk functions. I also however discovered that now I cannot mount either Zip 750 disk from an Xterm. When I try I now receive the message “I could not determine the file system type and none was specified.” Strange. 8. For both these two drives, the DVD and the Iomega Zip 750, the “Removable Media KDE daemon” opens. Since I prefer to open these in a Konqueror tab instead of in a new window, I would like to be able to prevent that daemon from opening in a new window. Is there a way to do so? 9. Finally, the floppy drive is not recognized at all in the Squeeze box. With a disk installed it does not show up in the “system:/media”, nor can it be mounted in an Xterm. What, if anything, be done to use floppies with Squeeze and KDE-Trinity Konqueror? Ken Heard, Toronto, Canada