I am trying to mount a usb on a RHEL box
When i do fdisk -l to see the available partition i got the following error

Disk /dev/sdb: 8388 MB, 8388608000 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 8000 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 379950 937327 570754815+ 72 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 ? 82368 1027695 968014120 65 Novell Netware 386
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3 ? 913029 1858355 968014096 79 Unknown
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4 ? 1409025 1409052 27749+ d Unknown
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

And when i try to mount /dev/sdb1

it says /dev/sdb1 does not exists.


Can anybody help in solving this problem

Well, what is do you expect to be on that USB whatever-it-is? 8 GB sounds like a stick, but why four partitions? There appear to be four partitions, the second of which is detected as Novell Netware. The others appear to be broken or unrecognizable. It may be possible that the kernel on the system you are trying to mount that drive on doesn't include the correct file system drivers for that device, or the system may simply be broken.

Robin

Thank for your comment robin,

I have copied some data from a windows machine and then try to copy it to linux. I included the standard usb-storage module in the kernel using modprobe.

Windows is still able to recognise the drive and the contents in it.

But does Windows see four partitions, too? The usb-storage module isn't the problem, I suppose the stick should be in Fat32 format, so what we're looking for is vfat support.

The file system could be damaged if you unplugged the stick without properly unmounting it, and Windows might still show its content. Linux is far more strict in that regard. Try running scandisk on the stick in Windows.

Robin

No windows see only one partition.
I simply formatted the disk before putting data on to it, it did the same with an another 1 gb stick and its working fine.

Unable to figure out the exact reason for it.

Theoretically (or maybe 'ideally'), the USB drive would indeed have FAT filesystem(s) of some sort on it.

The OP's output from `fdisk -l` looks remarkable similar to that of a USB 160Gib hard drive I got a little while ago.

When the drive was new, it came with some Windows software on (some part of) the drive.

When I connected it to my Linux machine, it looked just just the OP's does-- 4 partitions, with the second one being some weird/non-linux filesystem and the remaining 3 partitions 'type unknown'. But I don't know if it actually *had* partitions on it.

I tried numerous times under Linux to repartition the drive and/or format the 'existing partitions' to no avail; the drive just kept being all screwed up on reboot; in the end I just made one big partition (formatted the whole thing as Ext2) and it has worked like a charm ever since.

Sasha

As i am copying data to disk only, i dont want to format or repartition the disk. How can i do it without making the partition again.

A new 32 gb drive again shows of this error.

How can I force it to be the device /dev/sdb1

PMP,

D-Bus (udevd and hald) is feature implementation by RHEL programmers, i am not running RHEL but I can safely presume that it does well at handling removable devices AUTOMATICALLY no matter in what countenance they appear to the system.

my point here means that what you need is just to configure your username to handle devices:

go to users; add your username to groups: "hal" "udev" "daemon" "messagebus"
restart dbus from terminal or just reboot if you want,
your usb device should be automatically mounted and a shortcut is offered on the Desktop.

goodluck