Newbie USB Flash Memory mounting question
 

I've recently installed Fedora Core 1 on my computer, and cannot seem to get my USB flash stick mounted. Its a 128mb Jetflash 2.0, which i'm fairly certain is formatted FAT.

It won't auto-detect, and when i try
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
I get an error message about sda1 being a bad block device or something like that (cannot remember verbatim). I'm thinking that perhaps the device isn't sda1 as i was told to expect it to be, but cannot think how to check this.

If it matters, i'm on a KDE desktop. Any help would be appreciated, ty.

Hi

First check the following as root:
lsusb should give you a list of attached USB devices
lsscsii shows you, how the kernel mapped your USB stick to scsii devices.

If sda is present, do the following:
- detach the USB stick
- reboot without stick
- atach the USB stick
- look in the output of dmesg and search for USB and SCSII

finally try the mount again. If it fails, look in the output of dmesg

Dirk

I'm afraid that went by a bit quick for me, lol. I don't know what lsusb is, where its stored, or what i'm looking for in it. Nor lsscsii. And how exactly do i check the output of dmesg?

I only know the basics of linux, and beyond the mount commands and how to edit fstab and such, i'm a bit lost in the woods. Could you please give me something a little more step-by-step?

Sorry for the bother.

No problem ;)

lsusb and lsscsi are commands, that can be invoked from a shell. Just simply open a shell/terminal and enter lsscsi
You'll get a list of the available scsi devices /dev/sda ....

To see, if the USB stick is correctly attached open a shell/terminal and change to root (su - )
Than enter the comand lsusb
This should display all USB related devices which where found by the kernel
If you can find the USB stick enter dmesg. Look at the output and scroll backwards. You'll finde something like new USB device found. From there the kernel should show how he map it to a virtual scsi device.

If something goes wrong, try search the forum. There're lot of entries, what can go wrong ;)

Dirk