Hello,

My problem is basically I cannot access my USB drive on fedora. On my laptop I have windows XP, but have microsoft virtual machine 2004 which enables me to have multiple OS, therefore I have fedora installed on it. It is the one before last version of fedora. When I run fedora I can access the floppy and cd rom drives when inserted, however, I cannot find the usb drive anywhere. I was wondering if anyone knew how to activate it or access it? Or if anyone is familar with vitual pc, do you know an easy way to transfer files between OS - so I can switch my files on fedora to XP and then put them on usb using xp?

Also, if the above problem cannot be solved, my overall problem is saving files onto a medium, I usually use usb but have also been trying to use a cd-rw to save my work on fedora. However, I do not know how to write files to the cdrom, can anyone help?

Any ideas much appreciated.

Jack

Can you explain further why you can not access the USB drive including error messages.

Try using /dev/sda1 to access the drive.
Login as root then:

Create a directory to use as a mount point
mkdir /mnt/usb

Mount the drive
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

I am running Linux Version 2.4.21-20.EL with Red Hat Enterprise 3.

My flash drive works great under Windows, but under LINUX, I get several errors when I use:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt

sda : READ CAPACITY failed
sda : status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Current sd00:00 sense key Not ready
sda : block size assumed to be 512 bytes, disk size 1GB
sda : Write Protect is off

I/O error : dev 08:10, sector 0
unable to read partition table
mount : /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

Are you using KDE or GNOME. I just bought a USB drive and Fedora detects it with no problems and I didn't have to configure anything. All I have to do to access it is clico on the Computer icon on the GNOME desktop and "flash" appears as a drive on my desktop and I can read and write to it.

hmm i have fedora and it should tell u where the drive is located under Main Menu then System Tools and it should be under Hardware Browser
this is on GNOME

Hi.

All is well in bolintb land.

I was actually using a COMPACT FLASH CARD reader.

I just picked up a 128 MB keychain flash reader (at Staples for 20 bucks), and it works great.

Thanks for your input.

I am new to Linux. I have the same problem. My host system is Vista and I ran VMWARE server. The host system is Fedora core 3. I followed the following instructions.

Try using /dev/sda1 to access the drive.
Login as root then:

Create a directory to use as a mount point
mkdir /mnt/usb

Mount the drive
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb[/QUOTE]

I got the following error messages:
mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt/usb busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is mounted on /boot

Inside mtab file:
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 rw 0 0

Inside blkid.tab file:
<device DEVNO="0x081" TIME="1197081411" LABEL="/boot" UUID='5de2ca00-e6a9-4f16-a7a4-d3625b126208" SEC_TYPE="ext3" TYPE="ext2">/dev/sda1</device>

Any suggestion?

Reuseapc

FC3 has not been supported for a long time. It will be much easier if you switch to a supported version. Fedora 7 and Fedora 8 are the only two versions that are currently supported. Many issue of the older version will just work out of the box in newer versions (particularly on newer hardware).

Good Luck
Lazlow

Hi,
Which filesystem does your USB drive support, may be this filesystem is not supported by Linux try fdisk -l and try to mount the USB drive.

Regards,
Jack.

I am stuck with FC3 because of application software requirement. FC3 cannot recognize SATA HD, so I have to install VMWare. If there is a way around this problem, it will be great.


Thanks, Jack.
The message shown on the fdisk -l command return the following info:
/dev/sda has a total 10.7GB space, 1305 cylinders
/dev/sda1 is Boot and start from Cylinder 1 and ends at 13. ID=83, System=Linux
/dev/sda2 starts from 14 and ends at 1305. ID=8e. System=Linux LVM

Any suggestion for the next step?

You will have to tell us what he application software is. In MOST instances getting an application to run on a newer version is trivial vs fighting hardware issues.

dsouza_jack, Do your realize this is a 3 year old thread?

Reuseapc and arnel,
Welcome to LinuxQuestions. Your questions will get better responses if you ask them in a new thread instead of posting to a dead thread that is 3 years old thread.