accesing USB pendrives from bash console

altella · 07-02-2007, 08:03 AM

Hello to everyone;

I have a very basic installation of Debian (the smallest footprint 250 Mb aprox.) in an embedded machine. This machine has USB connectors, and I need one of them to get access to a pendrive for file sharing.

When I insert the USB pendrive, Debian recognises it,and if I execute "lsusb", the pendrive appears.

The thing is that I don´t know how to mount it, or how to access it, because I doesn´t appear in the /etc/fstab file.

Could anyone tell me the process to access this type of devices???

Thank you all in advance.

dive · 07-02-2007, 08:46 AM

Make a mount point somewhere e.g. mkdir /mnt/usb
Check dmesg a few secs after plugging in usb stick - it should say which device it is e.g. /dev/sda1
Edit /etc/fstab and make an entry for it e.g.

Code:

/dev/sda1         /mnt/usb      vfat        noauto,user,uid=dive,sync  0   0

Then you can mount it with 'mount /mnt/usb' as root

farslayer · 07-02-2007, 01:32 PM

I usually do the following.

tail -f /var/log/messages
Plugin the USB flash drive or card reader, watch for what the system identifies it as..

Code:

it-etch:~# tail -f /var/log/messages
Jul  2 11:04:08 it-etch -- MARK --
Jul  2 11:24:08 it-etch -- MARK --
Jul  2 11:44:08 it-etch -- MARK --
Jul  2 12:04:09 it-etch -- MARK --
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: usb 6-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: usb 6-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
Jul  2 14:23:20 it-etch kernel: USB Mass Storage support registered.
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel:   Vendor: SanDisk   Model: Cruzer Titanium   Rev: 2000
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel: SCSI device sdb: 1014784 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel: SCSI device sdb: 1014784 512-byte hdwr sectors (520 MB)
Jul  2 14:23:25 it-etch kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off

then I check to see if I have a directory to mount it to..

Code:

it-etch:/# ls /media
cdrom  cdrom0  usbdisk  winmount

since I have a usbdisk directory already created I can just use the mount command. if there was no directory there to mount the drive You would need to create one.. mkdir /media/usbdrive

mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk

If you want to mount the drive as a normal user (not root) which is probably the case, you must add the appropriate line to /etc/fstab as mentioned above.

Debian uses the /media directory instead of the /mnt directory by default for user mounted drives. don't ask me why. realistically you could create a directory anywhere to mount it to..