Hi

I'm using FC3 with KDE on a QDI b1/S with a p3-550Mhz
I tried to use my USB memory stick but I cant do it. I'm not even talking about hotplugging. I boot with the disk plugged but nothing new is detected or put in /dev. So naturally there is no sda1 or any other device to mount. I know It's not a problem with the USB stick or the USB ports on the machine because I dual boot with win98 and everything works there fine.
Maybe its a problem with the USB ports not being recognised at all by the OS?
If so how do I fix that. Is there anything I need to install?

You should look into your kernel to see if you have activated "Usb mass storage support" and "SCSI disk support".
In case they're not activated, you will need to recompile your kernel.
Also take a look to dmesg for possible error messages.

I'm a littlesurprised you say there is no sda1. On my system there are loads of nonexisting drives in /dev. have you tried simply mounting it to an existing directory with something like

# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /media/usb-stick

maybe you could do 'dmesg | grep /dev/sd' to find where your system sees the drive (if it does)

(unless you use a non-standard=self-compiled kernel usb mass storage support is (probably) included - at least it is in the standad fc kernels)

Assuming FC3 comes with a 2.6 kernel series the name of device node could be uba or ubb.
Plug in your flah drive and see what dmesg says ie
dmesg | grep -i uba
or
udevinfo -a -p `udevinfo -q path -n /dev/uba1`
prererably as root
Ciao

I ran fc3 before upgrading to fc4 (both standard with 2.6 kernels) and all usb devices were always at some /dev/sd* usually /dev/sda(1)

I'm sure its not there by any name. When I boot without it, /dev has 244 objects. When I boot with it its the same number so its just not there.
I tried booting knoppix 4.0 to see what that would come up with but I couldnt boot at all. It gets stuck relatively early on when it starts creating the fstab.
Anyway assuming its a problem with the usb drivers in general on the fedora installation how do I go about fixing it. Are there any packages included in the distro that I should install?

The fact that tha number of /dev entries doesn't change is no proof of anything. There are devices present in /dev that don't really exist(or more accurately, could exist but are not in use)

I booted with the ubuntu live cd. The flash disk was hotplugged and recognised instantly. At this point I dont know what else to do.