I am having some trouble mounting my USB drive. I have tried several different commands and cannot come up with a solution. Currently Redhat 7.3 is my linux OS but I am dual booting with Windows 2003 Server. If anyone could help me on this subject it would be appreciated. I am still learning the linux environment and am eager to learn more.

Back when I used Red Hat 7.3 ages ago, I never owned a usb drive, so I never did try to get it to work on that version of Linux. Are sure that your kernel version supports a usb drive? what commands are you using to mount it.

We need to know in more detail what you've tried, and what the effects were, before we can effectively help you. What commands did you try? Did you try it as root? What error messages did you get? Does the 'lsusb' command even list the device?

Have a quick read of How To Ask A Question to see the kind of things we need to know.

Well first I created a directory with mkdir /mnt/usb. Then I tried to mount the flash drive using mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb. After doing this I did not get any errors but I cannot mount from a floppy disk or a CD anymore and am clueless to what I did wrong. Like I mentioned before I am new to Linux and using such an old version makes it hard to find solutions to my problems. To answer your question lx4svr, I was told that the 7.3 kernal does not support usb although you can make it so it is using certain commands. I know mounting the usb is possible because a kid I went to school with last year did it and I have no idea how. He was pretty much a Linux guru and could do just about anything on any of the flavors.

If your kernel doesn't support usb, then you can't do anything until you get a kernel that does. That means you'll probably have to recompile it yourself. If the 'lsusb' command doesn't show anything (or even exist), and/or you don't have a /proc/bus/usb folder, then you don't have usb support.

Why are you using such an old version anyway? Why not upgrade to a nice new distro with a 2.6 kernel and save yourself a lot of hassle? Seriously, Linux has come a long way since then.

Well, after posting yesterday i figured out my problem so I am guessing that the kernel does support it in some way or form and is not as updated as newer versions of linux. As for my reasoning on using such an old version, its not my choice. I am using linux for a class I am taking at a technical school. We were not given a choice on what version we use and the class is an independant study so we are not given much help and are responsible for solving problems on our own. Therefore I have been using the Internet and have found this site works the best. Thank you for all your help and I am sure you will hear again from me shortly