My daughter recently purchased an Usb connected Mp3Player/Usb Stick
manufactured by Medion,model MD40838.
Trying to get it running on my pc [Debian3.0 distribution with kernel 2.4.18]
i can mount the device [mount /dev/sda1 /mnt],
i can copy files onto it, and i can do an unmount.
Remounting and all the files still are on the stick.
HOWEVER:
after unmounting and disconnecting the stick/mp3player from the usb cable
it says:no files !
Remounting it, i find this to be true:all previously copied files are gone !
QUESTION:
a neighbour of mine [Redhat x distribution with kernel 2.4.20] has no problems !
Assuming, this all has someting to do with kernel/modul releases,
i could not find a newer &stable release than my own 2.4.18.
SHOULD I TRY AN UNSTABLE RELEASE ?
Thanks for an answer.Yours truely Max Euer.

not sure if this will be that relevant, but i've found that the copying over usb will continue *AFTER* the copy command has been completed. consequently a standard console based umount command will wait until all other IO has happily completed. are you unmounting via an interface that is not actually waiting for the unmount to complete? if you're not already, give it a few minutes, esp if it's only running on usb 1.1 instead of usb 2.0

Thank you Chris for your swift reply.
Waiting doesn't help.
BUT i found this:
if i use the mp3 player solely as an usb stick, the once copied files will remain on the stick.
I mean: i do a mount,then copy something, do an umount, then disconnect the stick from the cable.
Then, if i don't touch the 'Play' button on the mp3 player, remounting it: files are still there !

It now seems to me, that the player erases them, once he's put into player-mode.
What i can't figure out is, what my neighbours' system is doing different than mine.
Any idea ?
Yours truly

Finally found the solution, thanks to the good folks at kernel.org:
kernel version 2.4.28 seems to handle all [my] Usb stuff correctly.
They have also changed something in the vfat code, which satisfies my Mp3-player finally.
Thanks again.
Yours truly
Max.