Basically I have seen a lot of posts on here suggesting that to get a USB pen drive (flashdrive) working the system must be rebooted. Does Linux not support hot plugging USB devices?

I change the cards in my flash card reader without doing anything special. Sounds to me like it's supported. The OS was installed with the reader in place so I don't know about initial rebooting. Easy to find out, though.

I can hot plug my usb keyboard and it works fine. (go from ps/2 to usb)

However i can't get the lilo prompt to recognize it.

Hi,
I have a USb Thumbdrive which i need to use to move files of larger size from my P.C to my friends p.c both we are using Redhat 7.2 but the problem is that when i insert my thumbdrive my p.c gets hangs plz. provide assistance

Using Fedora 23, and older, I have no problem with this. However, if the USB stick, or any volume is formatted in a linux filesystem, it will be coded to a specific owner. Hence to access that data on another machine, you would have to change the owner of the data in that machine using CHOWN in su and a terminal.

For this reason, I rarely format external drives in ext2,3 or 4.

Instead for USB sticks You might use FAT, FAT32 or NTFS, depending on the use it is to get. (Certain uses demand specific file formats, such as unetbootin)

This also apples to external drives, firmware RAID boxes, that are connected directly, such as by USB 2 or 3, eSATA, Thunderbolt, Firewire, etc.

I have done this many times, but I find that not all adapters will work that way for Keyboards.

Given that the diameter of the pins of a PS/2w connector are only .202" in diameter, I am not enthusoastic about that connector. I find that too small and mechanically not very robust.

So for all of about $30.00 CDN, I can simply buy a USB keyboard, either standard American or Canadian French in Quebec and forget the adapter issue, however, it may be be necessary to reboot the computer with A PS/2 keyboard and change the settings in the BIOS to accept a USB keyboard.

Then power down, change the keyboard, and reboot.

For mice, things are easier, however again a PS/2 mouse or trackball might also have problems with some adapters, depending on both the mouse and the adapter.

I am currently running an old PS/2w mouse through an adapter of a type I know works well, but the keyboard is a USB.

The idea here is that eventually, I want to build my own "joymouse" to palliate a physical coordination problem, and also be user repairable, but that is going to take a lot if time for the mechanical work, so in the interim I have many work-arounds.

Ummm, this thread was over 11 years old...

some problems never go away