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Old 04-21-2004, 07:34 PM   #1
RaulConQ
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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Louisville, KY, USA
Distribution: debian (stable)
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Unhappy USB device frustration: slack9.1


Right, so I just installed Slackware 9.1 (ditching SuSE 8.1) and am having some USB woes. I've searched up and down (LQ and elsewhere) so... well, here it is:

Hotplugging is enabled. Slack recognizes my printer (also USB) and tells me that my generic USB mp3 player is sda1, and lsmod shows uhci and usb-storage mods loaded. That Slack sees this as a storage device is fine (currently my document backups are on the device) as SuSE did the same. The fs on the device is msdos, but when i: "mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda" or "mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda" i get told that sda1 is not a valid block device. Any ideas?

(some output)

[19:35:56] root:/# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 37252 0 (unused)
snd-mixer-oss 11992 0 [snd-pcm-oss]
parport_pc 14724 1 (autoclean)
lp 6752 0 (autoclean)
parport 23264 1 (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
printer 7040 0
usb-storage 65536 0
uhci 24496 0 (unused)
usbcore 58400 1 [printer usb-storage uhci]
tulip 40928 1
crc32 2880 0 [tulip]
snd-emu10k1 60212 0
snd-pcm 55904 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1]
snd-timer 13252 0 [snd-pcm]
snd-hwdep 4672 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-util-mem 1136 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-page-alloc 6004 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm]
snd-rawmidi 12512 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd-seq-device 3920 0 [snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi]
snd-ac97-codec 37240 0 [snd-emu10k1]
snd 27460 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-hwdep snd-util-mem snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec]
soundcore 3332 6 [snd]
emu10k1-gp 1352 0 (unused)
gameport 1452 0 [emu10k1-gp]
ide-scsi 9424 0
agpgart 39576 0 (unused)

[19:35:59] root:/# mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda
mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device
 
Old 04-21-2004, 07:52 PM   #2
Slacker_Rex
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My line to mount my usb drive is listed as vfat not MSDOS. You might want to give that a try.
 
Old 04-21-2004, 08:52 PM   #3
Electro
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Well to get usb disk storage working in LINUX. You have to load up sd_mod and usb-storage. The steps to get usb disk storage working assuming usb is setup properly

1) modprobe usb-storage
2) modproge sd_mod

You already have usb-storage loaded so you just need to load sd_mod. Then /dev/sda should pop up in /dev. Make sure that /dev/sda is a valid block device by doing fdisk -l /dev/sda. Some distributions list loads of block devices that are not valid. I guess some distributions are lazy to test devfsd and it is a lot easier on the user to find valid block devices in /dev. If you have tons of block devices named /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd, and so on and on, just type fdisk -l /dev/sd[a-z]. This will give you a list of valid block devices. Sometimes when you first used a usb pen drive or usb hard drive. It may work in Windows but LINUX may go crazy and it finds a bunch of partitons. You may have to go into Windows and copy the files. Then go into LINUX and make partitions on it. Next format it.
 
Old 04-22-2004, 01:24 PM   #4
RaulConQ
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Unhappy no love

ok, so I tried loading sd_mod ....

[13:17:29] root:/home/reelbigjosh# modprobe sd_mod
modprobe: Can't locate module sd_mod

does this mean i need to recompile my kernel? i'm running bare.i -- and i've (sadly) never done so...
anyway, if this is the case, let me know.

(more output)

[13:17:30] root:/home/reelbigjosh# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1073 MB, 1073741312 bytes
5 heads, 63 sectors/track, 6657 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 315 * 512 = 161280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 801 126126 6 FAT16

Disk /dev/hda: 18.0 GB, 18042716160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2193 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4 32098+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 5 66 498015 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 67 2193 17085127+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 3227 MB, 3227148288 bytes
128 heads, 63 sectors/track, 781 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 = 4128768 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 781 3148960+ 83 Linux
 
Old 04-25-2004, 01:50 PM   #5
RaulConQ
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Thumbs up FIXED

i managed to fix it, here's what i did.

knowing that hotplugging was enabled, on a hunch i rebooted but made sure that the usb device was on when i did so. i logged in as root, mounted the device and VOILA! it worked. the command i used was:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /dev/sda

i suspect that the last time i started the box, the usb device was not powered on, and so hotplugging didn't recognize that anything was plugged into that usb port. i don't know if this guess is correct, but if anyone else is having this problem, give it a shot. worked for me.
 
Old 04-27-2004, 01:16 AM   #6
Utah
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I'm having the same problem trying to mount my usb flash memory reader. But rebooting with the reader plugged in didn't solve the "not a valid block device" problem. I tried the "fdisk -l /dev/sda" command but it reports nothing back on any of the sd[a-z]? device files. Does that mean they are not "valid"? I need more info on this "valid" business. If I delete them and recreate them with mknod, would that change anything?

Frustrated.
Utah
 
  


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