Hi guys..
Im new here and very new to linux.
Im just having some problems accessing a USB flash drive. I have been trying for days with no luck.
Im using DSL on a Live CD.
Im trying to get my WIFI working (i have an internal wifi card on my laptop).

In order to do this I believe I have to install the drivers for it and use ndiswrapper (came with DSL) so linux can use them.
I have the drivers on a USB stick. (Atheros drivers).
Now my problem is accessing the USB stick in linux.

Do I need to format the stick in any special way for linux to see it?
When I boot DSL before the 'desktop' loads it saids 'found usb storage device' (or something to that effect). does this mean it is already mounted?

I used the 'dmesg' command it is saids that my usb is on sda3.

I tried to mount it manually using:
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/pen/
but i get the error message:
"mount: relocation error: mount: undefined symbol: blkid_known_fstype"

Ive also navigated to /mnt/sda3 but the directory is empty.

The device is listed under the lsusb command.

I dont know what else to try. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer me.

You can check what has been mounted by running the following command:-

# mount

This will display all mounted file systems. If your USB stick is not mounted then use the following procedure.

I'm guessing that the file system on your USB stick is FAT32, in which case you can mount the stick using the following command as root :-

# mount -t vfat /dev/sda3 /mnt/pen

Don't forget that /mnt/pen has to exist first (ie. mkdir /mnt/pen if it doesn't already exist)

thanks for your reply.
i tried that n i think i got it mounted.
but i cant seem to find the wifi drivers on the usb stick.
i navigate to /mnt/pen/ and all thats is listed there is
two folders: 001 and 002 (the folders contain files called "001" "002")
two files: called "devices" and "drivers" (to which it saids "permission denied" when i try to open them.)
but i cant find my wifi driver files anywhere.
i should note that the drive is mounted with the "usbdevfs" file system. i found this out using the 'mount' command. so when i mounted the drive i changed vfat to usbdevfs.
thanks for your help so far. much appreciated.

Can anyone help me please????

Kaotik,

Become root and type in the following command once the USB stick is mounted :-


# chmod -R 777 /mnt/pen

This will then allow you to view all files on the stick

thanks for your reply.
i typed that command once the usb drive was mounted.
and the command worked but when i navigate to the /mnt/pen directory i cant find the wifi drivers.
as mentioned before all there is is:

two folders: 001 and 002 (the folders contain files called "001" "002")
two files: called "devices" and "drivers"

however now when i tried to open the devices file i got the following message:
.devices: line1: T:: command not found
.devices: line2: syntax error near expected token '('
.devices: line2: 'B: Alloc= 0/900 us (0%), #Int= 0, #Iso= 0'

Where would the wifi files be located?

Thanks again much appreciated.

Do this as root please and post the result here (copy and paste from the next line):-

# find /mnt/pen -exec file '{}' \;