I just got a flash drive to work on Linux, then like 2 minutes later I goto mount it to copy something to it and it wont mount. I keep getting "you must specify the filesystem type" So I try every filesystem type there is and I keep getting "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, or too many mounted file systems"
I accidentally typed " man mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick " bacause I wanted to read the man page. The bizarre part is when i hit q to quit, the flash drive worked, I reapeated it and it works everytime. So now I have to put man in front of mounting my flash drive? WTF?.........

Technical Linux question, so moved to General.

I think that the answer is in the logs, especially in the events happening more or less at the same time. Have you checked it? First see kernel log. They may have messages about detecting the drive some time after it's in. My guess is that there was a timeout somewhere (finished when you were runing man).

Actually I wasnt really asking a question, I just posted it cuz it was strange.
Everytime I type " man mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive " Then mount man page opens up then when I hit q the man page closes and then the flash drive mounts, but if I do just " mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive "
I get "must specify filesystem type " message. Very bizarre.

You can just put an entry in /etc/fstab setting the filetype to auto if you are still having trouble, that works for me.

I have tried auto and everything else and it does not work.

Was the drive pre-formatted?
IIRC I had similar problems with a USB drive I bought. Once I used CFdisk to re-format it the problems stopped.

Yes, its been used already and I did access it once.