Ubuntu 18.04 doesn't read SD card (Realtek)

Question

I have Ubuntu 18.04 on a Dell Inspiron 11" laptop, which according to the spec has a Realtek card reader. It worked fine from Windows, but not since Ubuntu was installed.

I've tried various suggestions found in other threads, for example installing the drivers from the Realtek website, installing exFAT with this command...

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

...reinstalling udisks 2...

sudo apt-get install --reinstall udisks2

...and rebooting between each thing I tried.

The output from lsub shows the reader (see below) but the card doesn't appear in files. Once I got a very short glimpse of the card, after a standard update of the system, just before reboooting it appeared but then was gone again after the reboot.

What else can I try?

All suggestions are welcome!

Output from lsusb and lspci:

~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5129 Card Reader Controller
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0c45:671e Microdia 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0438:7900 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0cf3:e005 Atheros Communications, Inc. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Processor Root Complex
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) I/O Memory Management Unit
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Stoney [Radeon R2/R3/R4/R5 Graphics] (rev eb)
00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device 15b3
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Host Bridge
00:02.5 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Processor Root Port
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Host Bridge
00:08.0 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1578
00:09.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157d
00:09.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Audio Controller
00:10.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB XHCI Controller (rev 20)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 4b)
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB EHCI Controller (rev 49)
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 4b)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 11)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 15b5
01:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

~$ sudo lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
loop0     7:0    0    91M  1 loop /snap/core/6350
loop1     7:1    0  14,8M  1 loop /snap/gnome-characters/317
loop2     7:2    0   2,3M  1 loop /snap/gnome-calculator/260
loop3     7:3    0   3,7M  1 loop /snap/gnome-system-monitor/100
loop4     7:4    0  54,5M  1 loop /snap/core18/1192
loop5     7:5    0   4,2M  1 loop /snap/gnome-calculator/501
loop6     7:6    0   956K  1 loop /snap/gnome-logs/81
loop7     7:7    0    13M  1 loop /snap/gnome-characters/139
loop8     7:8    0   3,7M  1 loop /snap/gnome-system-monitor/57
loop9     7:9    0  89,1M  1 loop /snap/core/7917
loop10    7:10   0  14,5M  1 loop /snap/gnome-logs/45
loop11    7:11   0  34,6M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/818
loop12    7:12   0 140,7M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/92
loop13    7:13   0 140,7M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-26-1604/74
loop14    7:14   0 149,9M  1 loop /snap/gnome-3-28-1804/71
loop15    7:15   0  44,2M  1 loop /snap/gtk-common-themes/1353
sda       8:0    0  29,1G  0 disk 
├─sda1    8:1    0   6,5G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda2    8:2    0     1K  0 part 
└─sda5    8:5    0  22,6G  0 part /
mmcblk0 179:0    0 238,3G  0 disk

Can you please post the output of sudo lsblk and check if if there is an entry like /sdbx ? Also, usually a restart is enough but run systemctl restart udisks2.service.Was this card formatted with a bootable iso ? — kortewegdevries, Nov 30 '19 at 14:57
Done (added lsblk to original post). Trier running systemctl.... but nothing changed. The disk was not a bootable iso, just wanted to use it as extra memory space. — , Dec 01 '19 at 18:58
UPDATE Tried a different SD memory card, and it worked!? The one that worked is a Kingston 16 GB (fat32), the one that doesn't work is a SanDisk Ultra 256 GB. I tried reformatting to fat 32, nfts, and ext4, and making smaller partitions on it. It still doesn work. Why does one work and not the other? — , Dec 01 '19 at 19:02
Might they be of different type? I had a similar issue on my old computer that could read SDHC but not SDXD (hardware limitations...) Please check if the bigger card is also newer and refer to this list to see if it might be the problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SD_card#Capacity ) — dadexix86, Dec 01 '19 at 19:29
Apart from any hardware issues Ubuntu recognises your SD card.Can you run sudo umount /dev/mmcblk0 sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0 /mnt if it is not mounted already. Also see this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/95391/ — kortewegdevries, Dec 02 '19 at 01:34
@dadexix96: You are right, the big one is SDXD and the small one SDHC. Since teh reader could read both when running Windows, can't Ubuntu also? @Tanmap: The unmount only works when I've got the smaller card in, and the mount just gives an error saying it's already mounted. It doesn't look like a mounting issue, more a case that it doesn't recognize the SDXD card (which the linked thread doesn't address) — , Dec 02 '19 at 18:44

Ubuntu 18.04 doesn't read SD card (Realtek)

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