How to Access Files on Mounted USB Drive in Applications like Strawberry?

This is probably a super basic question, but after a lot of searching I can’t find an answer. It might be so basic no one has thought to talk about it. How do I see files on a mounted USB drive in an application like Strawberry?

The drives are visible in Dolphin, they are mounted, and when I click on “Devices” it searched up all the music on the drive, but when I click on “Open File” it goes to a file picker that does not seem to know about anything not on the root drive. This is a pattern I see in a lot of applications, the file picker can’t see anything but the root drive.

I’m sure this is just a lack of basic Linux knowledge on my part, but I can’t seem to find the right keywords to search to find the answer.

Within Strawberry:
Music-File-Other Locations

If you installed strawberry from the repository, then all you need to do in the file chooser is move up to the level of the root directory and then navigate to the /run hierarchy. The USB drive will be mounted under there.

Do however bear in mind that if you installed strawberry as either a Snap or a FlatPak, then this won’t work, because Snaps and FlatPaks are containerized applications. They do not have access to anything outside of your home directory.

In Linux, there is just a single file system, and all drives get mounted to different parts of that single directory tree. As a convenience, file managers such as Dolphin will display your attached drives separately in the sidebar. This mimics the behavior of MS Windows (and is arguably a bit more intuitive to the user). Depending on how it is implemented by an app, the file chooser dialog may not display those attached drives in the same way.

When you attach a USB drive, the udisks2 daemon automatically mounts the drive to your file system under /run/media/<your username>/. As Aragorn described, that is where you can find your USB drive. In the Strawberry dialog box sidebar, select “Computer”, then navigate down the directory tree to /run/media/<your username>/.

Thank you all,

jrichard326: This did not work for me. The version of strawberry (that I am using at least) does not offer an “other locations” option inside the file picker. There is a “devices” option on the main UI, but it only does an automatic scan.

Aragorn: I installed the app from the “Add/Remove Software” tool, so I assume it was a native install instead of a snap or flat pack. Your answer is mostly correct though, I did find my mounted drives in the /run folder, but I couldn’t find it at first. “Mounts” seemed like the obvious choice but that didn’t do it. Takakage was more specific in that it mentions a more complete path to look in.

Takakage: Thank you. This was the information I needed. I found the data I was looking for in /run/media/{username}/{drivename}/

I agree showing the mounted drives as specific entities in the file manager is more intuitive, but I don’t mind looking for the mounted drives in the root either… the only problem is that I couldn’t find any information anywhere on where I should look in the file system for the mounted drives. I’m sure it’s blindingly obvious to experienced Linux users, but it’s one of those things that if you don’t know it, then you just don’t know it. There’s no intuitive logical path to follow to find the information because it is so basic it is assumed to be a foundational piece of knowledge that no one talks about. At least not unless you know the correct terms to put into the search engine. Even now knowing that I should have been searching for “Manjaro USB mount point” none of the first page results mention the path “/run/media/{username}/{drivename}/” Where is this information officially documented?

Sounds like your google foo needs a little work. :smile:

“arch external drives” brought this up as the first link (results may vary).

USB storage devices - ArchWiki

In the first section, automounting, there is a link to this page.

udisks - ArchWiki

Which says this:

By default, udisks2 mounts removable drives under the ACL controlled directory /run/media/$USER/

It’s also been mentioned in this forum quite a few times. man udisks contains a reference, searching for udisks or “arch udisks mount point” may bring up more.


However there’s an easier way - the blindingly obvious one - find where it’s mounted. :smile:

# any of these commands would work
lsblk
df
mount

From the GUI you could navigate to the drive in the file manager and the path should be displayed, it should be in the directory properties too (right click -> properties). Also you could open a terminal at that location and run pwd or echo $PWD.

Alternatively, you could mount it manually to a path of your choosing.

sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

Easy once you know how. :smile:

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