Finding & mounting USB stick

[Ruaridh]

Hi all

After a couple of months, I'm now hooked on Linux. I was starting to get sceptical for a couple of weeks, but I've now more or less abandoned the GUI and I'm trying to do as much as possible with BASH, and that's fun.

Anyway - my query (using SuSe 9.0 Pro): I have now taught myself to mount floppies and CDs from the command line. How do I mount a USB stick? I know it's under /dev, but how do I found out where it is? When I stick it in, the PC beeps, so something has been recognized. What command(s) can I use to find out where it is? How do I 'look' for it under /dev? A couple of people have told me to look for it, but they didn't say how.

Any help much appreciated

Ruaridh

[Trillian]

/dev/usb...
of this:
http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.devices.txt
google!

[Ruaridh]

Hi Trillian

I understand your impatience, but I've already looked at the listings under /dev/usb and my question is: which one of these listings should I be trying to mount? Is my USB stick a HID device, or is it a dabusb device or even a USB LCD device (what's the difference?). Having established an answer to this question, which of the ports should I be addressing? I have two hubs offering 6 sockets (4 at the back and 2 on the front panel), so there are 8 listings (0 to 7) for every device variation. If I stick the USB drive in one of the sockets in the front panel and the computer then beeps, which 'device' should I then address with a mount command? How does one 'know' these things? There must be some sort of command to get a listing of which devices, in an unmounted state, are stuck into the sockets. Is there some sort of 'current device status' command that also lists inactive devices?

I'm sorry to be stupid, but Google has thus far only told me what is listed under /dev/usb.

You're help and patience is appreciated

Ruaridh

[Ruaridh]

Me again

I've been doing a bit of digging and have found out this:

1. Check whether the kernel modules usbcore and usb-storage are loaded by running 'lsmod'

2. Stick the USB drive in the port and then either run 'dmesg' or check /var/log/dmesg. The device should then be listed and the /dev location revealed.

3. Mount and make a shell script for the next time round.

I'll give this lot a try and reply back if it doesn't work.

Thanks

Ruraridh

[Ruaridh]

Hi all

It's me - back with my USB problem again. So, did this:

1. Ran lsmod - shows that usbcore is loaded, but not usb-storage - don't know if that constitutes a problem.

2. Ran dmesg - shows that USB drive is at "sda at scsi1". A simple /dev/'location' was not forthcoming, so I was still left guessing.

3. Tried this: mount -t vfat /dev/sda /media/flashdrive
This didn't help. I also tried a whole bunch of variants of this and all showed the same message: "/dev/'location' is not a block-oriented device

I'm lost - anyone know how to read the map?

Thanks

Ruaridh

[Ruaridh]

OK - progress report:

I tried a different approach today:

1. Did cat /proc/scsi/scsi
This confirmed that the cdrom drive is listed as scsi0 and the USB flash drive has been correctly recognized as scsi1. The output of this command was a lot easier to read than dmesg - and a lot shorter.

2. Tried this: mount -t vfat /dev/sdb /media/flashdrive
Got the same response: sdb isn't a block-oriented device. Tried the same trick using sda1, scsi1 and variations thereof, all with the same result.

It's tantalizingly close - the USB stick has been correctly recognized ... I just can't find the right door in this maze.

Help, please ... somebody?

Thanks

Ruaridh

[Trillian]

Won't the mknod command help here? I might be mistaken, tho. http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/aix/cmd...mds3/mknod.htm
Suppose you'll have to do something like.,,
mknod /dev/scsi1 c 188 254

I salute your enthousiasm!

[Ruaridh]

Thanks for that Trillian. It's a good suggestion. I'm reluctant to try it because as far as I can make out from the cat /proc/scsi/scsi output, the 'node' is already there and I just need to mount the device correctly. Creating a new i-node shouldn't be necessary. However, if all else fails ...

If the output says 'sda at scsi1', shoooorly that indicates an existing device node. I don't quite understand why I can't seem to mount the drive. Is there a command that gives a straight /dev/'location' reading without forcing me to do any guess-work?

Thanks for your help

Ruaridh

[Ruaridh]

... well, I suppose I was warned that Linux isn't for the faint-hearted.

Current progress on the unsolved USB stick issue:

1. Went into a shop and had a look at a huge Linux compendium (Addison Wesley) which said I could establish the correct mount point under /dev by running fdisk -l (after sticking in the USB stick, of course). I did this and it just listed the HDD partitions - not hugely helpful.

2. I tried a million combinations of mount /dev/sda[a1, b, d ... ab etc. etc.] All to no avail.

3. I opened YaST and clicked on 'hardware test' after sticking the flashdrive in. It clearly listed the USB stick under SCSI and definitively stated the mount point as /dev/sda

4. Tried this: mount -t usbdevfs /dev/sda /media/flashdrive
Bingo! Or so I thought - there were no error messages. I then cd'ed over to /media/flashdrive and found the following entries:
001 002 003 004 devices drivers

The blue entries are folders, and they're empty. No sign of the files saved on the stick (a couple of .zip archives).

I am completely mystified. I really want this to work for two reasons: 1. It would me help me understand Linux better; 2. I don't have ISDN or DSL yet and I have a useless Winmodem (USB!). I can't connect to the net with Linux at the moment and I use the USB stick to transfer files from work to home and vice versa.

Can anyone shed some light on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for your help

Ruaridh

[Ramses728]

Hy!

I'm also a new Linux user and I had the same problem. In have installed Fedora Core 1 so my solution works on this distribution but i thinks it might help you

So in /var/log/messages i see that my USB stick is recognized as sda1

I created a new folder named usb in /mnt directory

after that I opned the terminal and gave this command:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb -o umask=0

So, that works for me. Hope to be usefull for you.

[wilhelm]

I am using FC1 but my gives me the error -> vfat not supported by kernel


plz help

[smurfy]

Hello wilhelm, welcome to the forum.
I take it you have posted to this thread because you are getting this vfat error when trying to mount a USB torage device.

Open a terminal and type
cat /proc/filesystems and post back the results.

[sethperk]

Originally Posted by smurfy

Hello wilhelm, welcome to the forum.
I take it you have posted to this thread because you are getting this vfat error when trying to mount a USB torage device.

Open a terminal and type
cat /proc/filesystems and post back the results.

Hi smurfy,
I too am having similar difficulties, when I run:
cat /proc/filesystems

I get this:

nodev sysfs
nodev rootfs
nodev bdev
nodev proc
nodev sockfs
nodev futexfs
nodev tmpfs
nodev pipefs
nodev eventpollfs
nodev devpts
ext2
nodev ramfs
nodev hugetlbfs
vfat
iso9660
ntfs
nodev usbfs
nodev usbdevfs
msdos
efs

I am trying to recover files from my sister's XP machine that crashed and am running Gnoppix .8 on a Live CD. I wanted to copy the files to my iPod or to my Iomega Peerless drive. Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.