usb - traveldrive - formatting - automount

nomb · 08-06-2006, 07:17 PM

It seems like lately all my usb drives that I've used with widows are now read-only in linux...
This has cause a lot of frustration. I am hoping someone will be able to help me fix them. From what ive read on the net, they have to be formated with a fat16 / dos filesystem. Well, I've read on the net how to use fdisk and cfdisk and tried that but now when I plug in my traveldrive it doesn't come up on the desktop anymore and it is still read only. Could someone please walk me through how to format the drives and creat partitions on them so the will mount and work!!!

Thanks here is some info that might help:

OS: Suse 10.1

Kernel: 2.6.16.13-4-smp

dmesg | tail:

sdb: Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

mount -l:

/dev/sda2 on / type reiserfs (rw,acl,user_xattr) []
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/sda3 on /home type reiserfs (rw,acl,user_xattr) []
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)

fstab:

Code:

/dev/sda2            /                    reiserfs   acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/sda3            /home                reiserfs   acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/sda1            swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto,               0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0

I hope this is enough information, thank you to anyone who will help me!!!

nomb

PithyThought · 08-06-2006, 09:01 PM

Looks like your /var/log/messages is showing the drive as having been added as sdb. I'm usually paranoid, so (as root) I'll do an fdisk /dev/sdb and "p" to print the partition table - make sure I'm looking at what I think I'm looking at. ("q" to quit.)

I can't help you with why it wouldn't be showing up on your desktop. That's going to be too specific to Suse (and I'm a Fedora user.) What I can tell you is that after using fdisk you'll hopefully have a sense of which partition is "interesting" (having data on it.) You should be able to then mount the disk (as root) via "mount /dev/sd3 /some/directory" - although you'll want to make sure your "/some/directory" exists. eg. /mnt/usbdisk (And of course, I've assumed the third partition in my example. You'll want to change that number as appropriate.)

Now, I've over-simplified a bit as I don't have time to write a full essay with all contingencies. And having mounted it as root, you'll have root owning the files. Perhaps a "man mount" might help you (and look for the second on "Mount options for fat." Hint: uid=value)

Some good learning ahead of you.

But you'll also want to figure out what standard practice is for Suse as it may have its own way of going about things.

I hope that helps,

Adam

nomb · 08-06-2006, 10:24 PM

Just an update, I took both traveldrives to my windows box and formated them with the fat filesystem. Both now mount on my linux box no prob... The only problem is that somehow, by default, any usb drive aparently has the group and owner of root. So if I want to use them, I have to login / su as root... This is quite annoying... Anyone know a fix? Thanks everyone!

nomb

nomb · 08-07-2006, 11:34 PM

Does anyone know, if I add USB to ea user will it maybe fix this?