I have a 256 MB Mittoni usb flash drive that I cant seem to get to work using redhat 9. I have looked at a lot of information on the web but still to no avail. Could someone please explain to me in reasonably simple terms how to go about setting this up.

well, i'm not sure about usb, as i've never used it, but i do know that you will have to compile it into your kenel
(cd /usr/src/linux, make menuconfig, make dep clean bzImage moules, make install modules_install) and make sure to edit your /etc/lilo.conf (or /etc/grub.conf) to point to your new (and old if you can) kernel

There is a post in the hardware section that i used...."Using a USB flash drive with Linux". Do a search for it. It worked fine for me on redhat 9. basically in terminal as root type 'modprobe usb-storage' to lode the necessary module into the kernel. Then make a directory to mount to eg 'cd /' then 'mkdir usbstick' next edit the file /etc/fstab...add a line '/dev/sda1 /usbstick vfat user,noauto,umask=0 0 0'. Next plug in the usb device and mount it 'cd /' then 'mount usbstick'. The device will then be accessible via the directory /usbstick.

Eh? Recompile kernel to get a USB flashdrive working?

Boot into Linux.
Plug in the pendrive.
Check that it has been found by typing dmesg
If it says something about USB mass storage, then onto the next step.
Really verify that the SCSI bus is reading it nicely by typing cdrecord -scanbus
It should tell you a device number.
Check to see if there is a new SCSI 'harddrive' ls /dev/sd*
Make a mountpoint for the device (as root - only do once) mkdir /mnt/flashdrive
Mount (as root) the drive mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/flashdrive
Obviously, the /dev/sda1 is whatever you found your new device was.
Also, obviously if you made an alternative mountpoint, mount it there instead of /mnt/flashdrive.
You can now read and write to your flash drive as root. In order to make things easier, you need to create an entry for it in /etc/fstab, but that's another story, and one that's been covered a few times already.

Hope this helps.

I have finally managed to mount my flash drive, however when I double click on the icon on the desktop no files are displayed in the window even though I know there is files on the drive. I have also tried saving to the drive and the system just hangs.

What mount command do you use - do you mount it from the shell or have you put an entry in fstab yet?

I seem to remember that if you're using the KDE desktop (I don't know about Gnome), you may need to right-click on the icon and select 'mount'. You could possible get around this by using something called supermount, but that (I believe) requires you to patch your kernel and reconfigure...

If you can cope with it, try just right-clicking and mounting.

Alternatively, if you're running GKrellM, you can add some funky buttons to mount/umount/eject your devices.