Got it. Anyone ever heard of a Manufacturer sending a
motherboard with usb defaulted to disabled? Thank You Aopen!!
Thanks for your quick reply jpbarto... a very simple:
> mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/JumpDrive

after having:

> touch /mnt/JumpDrive

Now I just need to find out why I get a "generic error"
when trying to write to it. Prolly something to do with
having formatted it in win2k

Thanks Again!

you're exactly right... the filesystem used by win2k and xp (is it some newer form of ntfs?) is not yet writable by the linux kernel module for that filesystem type. You can read it all you want but you can't write to it. I would suggest formating the drive with a fat32 filesystem.

just type "dmesg"
it is the log from the kernel, you should see you usb drive somewhere and the device it is using.
My flash drive is /dev/sdc because I have a scsi Zip at /dev/sda and a scsi Jaz at /dev/sdb.

You're right about the ntfs in win2k, but when I formatted the
JumpDisk I used FAT

(you have the option to use FAT, FAT32, or NTFS)

I think I'll try to format it using vfat and see if it works any better.

What device name you get depends on what other SCSI disks you have in your system. If you just have IDE disks, you get the first free scsi device file, /dev/sda. The names get assigned first come, first serve. /dev/sda1 is then just the first -- and usually only -- partition on the drive.

Hope it helps,
mlp

I have never seen this written up but have suspected as much.
My USB drive (which I accessed first) is on /dev/sda while my digital camera (accessed second) is on /dev/sda1.
So any other USB devices would continue to claim higher device names?

Actually, the letter gets incremented. The while USB drive is (like a disk) /dev/sda and the sda1 refers to partitions on there (like on the disks). The next device would then be /dev/sdb. I have just plugged in two USB drives and they are /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1. Here's what fdisk has to say about my drive:

hence /dev/sdb1. Just like with regular disks.

mlp

Hmm...
Ok back to theory number two.
Since I never access both devices at the same time, this is just how each device responds? If I did connect them both, one woud be sda and the other sdb?

Yes. Only the ones which are connected at the same time "count". Your USB drive by itself is /dev/sda, your camera by itself /dev/sda1... plug them in both and the later one will be on b.

Here's one of my systems with 12 SCSI disks, which take the letters a through l,

if I plug my USB drive there it becomes /dev/sdm1...

mlp

'Nother question. I've been looking at ways to configure *something* that when I insert my flash drive, will recognize that A: a usb device has been inserted and B: will recognize that it is my flash drive (not a digital camera or external 40 GB HD) and will resultingly C: mount the appropriate device (whatever was assigned to the flash drive whether it be sda,b,c,...xyz) to the appropriate mount point.

I've looked at hotplugging for about 5 minutes and then my attention got diverted to something else (I forget what grabbed my attention... a pretty girl, an unattended beer, an abandoned half-full pack of cigarettes).
Is hotplugging capable of this?

/edit: ok i actually read the thread and now i am getting errors when i try dmesg. ti says it cant find a valid FAT filesystem. it tells me many times, in fact. so im going to copy everything off, format it, and then get everything back on. hope 2k doesnt do it wrong...


/edit2: *ahem* apparantly i dont have enough rights on my work computer to format REMOVABLE MEDIA


/edit3: A-HA!

my laptop crashed so i had to reboot anyway, i was in the middle of processing something, and thats why i didnt reboot before. went into my xp pro install, formatted the flash drive, got fat32 on it, booted back into linux, it got all the settings from fstab and mounted it correctly! w00t i'm not too

now to compile ACPI support so the fan doesnt always spin....


/edit4: FRIGGIN EH

it was fine in linux...

i put it on my 2k machine and put my files back on...

suddenly not everythings fitting, it says its 55 megs (its supposed to be 64, so realisticly, at least 60). I get what i can on, put it in linux...and i get the bad file system error again. wow.

found this while trying to fix my problem: http://transitmount.sourceforge.net/