I am trying to use an external USB Hard Drive in Linux (Mandrake 8.2 PPC to be exact). I recompiled the kernel with full support for usb and usb mass-storage. What should I do now? I know I should look at var/log/messages--but what do I look for exactly? And then what commands do I use to actually mount the USB disk? Any help would be appreciated.

Hi!
Just by the way, did you compile scsi support into the kernel too?

Well, what you need to do is plug the drive into the computer, then look at /var/log/messages. At the bottom it should say something about a usb device that conneted. It should also say something about USB mass storage, and maybe something about scsi as well.

Ok, so after you've plugged it in, just mount it, like so.
(lets say you want to mount it on /mnt/usbdrive, so, first do mkdir /mnt/usbdrive)
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive

It should mount without errors, and you should be able to access it by going to /mnt/usbdrive.

Good Luck!
RefriedBean

<EDIT>
You don't need to go to /var/log/messages every time, you just look at it to see if its detected correctly or if it fails what might have gone wrong. So generally if it mounts correcty you won't have to go there again.
</EDIT>

I am having the same problem too! I have a scsi burner and I am wondering, under what /dev/sd? to mount it under. I keep getting an illegal block device error message. Is there a usb log that will tell me anything? When I check my /var/log/messages, it says:

Jul 14 15:06:30 brain1 kernel: hub.c: new USB device 00:07.4-2, assigned address 3
Jul 14 15:06:30 brain1 kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

Hi!
For the CD burner, you need support for scsi cdroms in your kernel too. Then simply mount it with
mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd1 /mnt/mountpoint

The USB mass storage devices are emulated as a scsi harddisk, so their dev files would be something like /dev/sda1.

Hope this helps!
RefriedBean