I have just started using Fedora Core 5. I can mount an external Seagate hard drive in SuSE10 OSS as /dev/sda..
but in Fedora there is no /dev/sda. The external hard drive is formatted as a Gentoo drive - no Windows partitions at all. I mount floppies in Fedora Core 5 using /dev/fdx.

Googling returned info on USB flashdrives mainly. I think Fedora changed stuff in fstab in Core 5.

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

Plug in the drive, have a look at the tail of /var/log/messages and mount the partition.

Example:

$ sudo tail /var/log/messages
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 00
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: SCSI device sda: 78140160 512-byte hdwr sectors (40008 MB)
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sda: test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: SCSI device sda: 78140160 512-byte hdwr sectors (40008 MB)
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sda: test WP failed, assume Write Enabled
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sda: assuming drive cache: write through
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sda: sda1 sda2 < sda5 >
Oct 8 22:03:04 Aspire5000 kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda

$ ls /media/usb_device
<no output nothing to see>

$ sudo mount -t auto /dev/sda5 /media/usb_device

$ ls /media/usb_device
ghost.exe $recycle.bin System Volume Information xphome.gho

$ sudo umount /media/usb_device

$ ls -al /media/usb_device
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 29 2005 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Feb 5 2006 ..

Dear Lenard

Thanks for the fast reply.

As a normal user ls /dev did not list sda's only scd0. Had a cdwriter mounted as /dev/scd0. Unplugged cdwriter. Unattached, reattached and turned external disk off and on. Not working. Logged in as root and /dev had sda's listed. Chmod +rwx /dev/sda2. Mounted /dev/sda2 /media/usbdisk ok. Mounted cdwriter on /dev/scd0 successfully too. Logged in as normal user and sda's back again! USB stick appears on desktop. Can't open as normal user. Try as root: mount -t auto /dev/sda2 /media/usbdisk. Works!

So it appears to have been a permissions thing all along. However the disappearing and reappearing sda's is a bit perplexing. ? Related to sequence in attaching and unattaching usb external hdd or cdwriter?

Cheers

Dear Lenard

Spoke too soon. The external hard drive is formatted as a reiser file system using gentoo[I robbed another PC to get it]. I can move or copy some files to the external hard drive but it crashes especially on directories. The drive I want to back up on the external drive uses a logical drive formatted with ext3, running Fedora Core 5. Should I format the external drive with ext3 using Fedora also?

Cheers

IMHO, external hard drives which are not used often should be formatted as ext2, no real reason to have journalling on a temporary mount.

Thanks,

It was formatted as reiser already and had some files on it. From error messages on booting I suspected the crashes were caused by Selinux - something I have not as yet modified from the installed setup, uninstalling Selinux seems to have fixed it, together with modifying some permissions. But at least I have a backup going painlessly and will have to bone up on and modify Selinux.

Cheers

Yea, it does seem at times that selinux causes more headaches then it fixes.

FYI: no reason to remove it, just disable it. Add the option 'selinux=0' on the kernel line in /boot/grub/grub.conf (or menu.conf) or edit the /etc/sysconfig/selinux file and set to disabled;

http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/selinux-faq-fc5/

.