I'm trying to mount a USB drive onto my Bela mini but it never shows up. Here's what I'm doing:

  • plug in Bela Mini, with or without the USB drive plugged in
  • access the board over SSH
  • plug in the USB drive if it isn't there already
  • run "lsblk"
  • the only thing that is listed is the mmcblk0 disk and partitions

I'm not sure what could be stopping the drive from being available to mount! I have tried with several USB drives. They are formatted fat32 and they mount perfectly well on a Raspberry Pi. the Bela is running version v0.3.8g.

I don't have a second Bela mini to test just now, so it could be the board itself. But perhaps there's a software situation I'm overlooking?

also when I run lsusb with a drive plugged in I get this
root@bela:~# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
which I suspect means it isn't being detected at all? I'm wondering whether the usb plug on my Bela is just borked

Try running dmesg -w in a terminal (not in the IDE) while you insert the drive, you'll probably see some error there. What is this drive? A USB stick or a hard drive? It may have power requirements that are not met by the Bela's < 500 mA available on the 5V.

    giuliomoro This is with a USB stick (I've tried two different ones with the same result)

    I tried running dmesg -w while plugging the stick in - no new messages are posted when I plug in or unplug the stick

      that's suspicious, can you try a different low power USB device, such as a mouse, keyboard or MIDI interface?

      yes - I just tried with a standard USB keyboard and still no messages posted at all when I plug it in with dmesg -w running

      (also nothing new shows up when I run lsusb with the keyboard either)

      I'm also now using a fresh Bela software install with the latest build, in case there was something running on boot that was causing issues. this doesn't seem to have fixed the USB port issue.

      try grep -i usb /mnt/boot/uEnv.txt, does it return anything?

      no, nothing at all happens when I run that

      I suspect an issue with the USB connector then ... a soldering iron and a bit of solder on the back of the USB connector may help reflow any pins that may not be properly soldered. Same for reflowing the "USB1" pins at the bottom of the Pocket Beagle. All of this with the power offm of course, and making sure you don't leave any pads bridged after the job is completed,