usb flash drive 3system is not working
 

Hello I'm a new Linux user and as a lot of us geeks, I have a several problems. I've downloaded Mandrake 10 Community with my Dell Inspiron 1100. I do not have modem which is not a huge problem as my usb flash (3system 256MB) I do not have a clue how to compile or mount or whatever may be the expression this into my mashine, SOmeone help!

well, I suppose your kernel has the needed modules either compiled in or just as modules.. :) you may check it like this (in console):

lsmod

(check to see names like usb-uhci, usb-ohci, usb-storage etc.)

and if there aren't any, you may just try and load them:

modprobe usb-storage

etc. but there's a chance they're all set up alright. now let's move on to the mounting: first we'd need to know what's the device name (mine was sda4 before I lost it somewhere..heh). before plugging the stick in, cd into /dev and do (in console):

ls sd* | less

and see what you get. now plug in your stick and repeat the command, and see if you got something new. if you did get, like sda4 or something, then that should be your stick. then just mount it:

mkdir /mnt/memstick
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/memstick

or, if it's not sda4 but something else, then just replace sda4 with whatever it is...the trickiest part in this is to get to know what the device is called. you can get tips of it by checking out some files in /proc. if you're lucky, there might be a folder in /proc/scsi that has "usb" in it's name, and under that folder might be a file that would tell the device name (my stick's info was found there after plugging, but I'm not sure about yours).

try out sda4 (or other sda's) as devices and see if you get lucky...if nothing helps, see that you do have these modules: usb-storage, usb-uhci, usb-ohci (for the last two, I'm not completely sure about the names - you can see them like this:)

modprobe -l | grep usb | less

and in the list you get, see the end of the lines (the filenames) and with modprobe try to load usb-storage and any -ohci or -uhci files...

modprobe usb-storage

after you have these modules, getting the thing work should be no big deal. and as I said, finding the device is the hardest part.

Hello there, look what it wrote in Mandarake control center:

Vendor: ?3SYSTEM

Bus: ?USB

Description: ?USB FLASH DISK

Module: ?unknown

Media class: ?Mass Storage|SCSI|Bulk (Zip)

I've tried to type commands you showed but always have same answer: command not found!

Can you be more specific please

Maybe you have to be logged in as root. In a console give command 'su' and then enter the root password. Then you are root and the commands should work.

Another thing to try - just plug in the stick and immediately run 'dmesg' command. The last dozen or so lines of output will hopefully show that the system has recognised it. Then you can mount it as suggested above.

Thanks for the advise I did it somehow but not I have several unknown hard discs (as he calls usb like that) that I can not move or delete or whatever. What should I do now. I ityped 'su' and went to root#localhost and tried again to type 'dmesg' he says that he recognize it but I don not know where? Should I get in the directorium and than type or what I how do I move within the root: mk is for make as ms-dos and else... If some one has enough patience to explain thanks in advance.

yeah, you probably have to be root (sorry I didn't remember this) until you've found the device and edited /etc/fstab properly to let users use it...

I really hate myself for losing my usb-stick as it would have helped a lot if I had it now..but nevertheless, let's start the easy way: by checking whether your device is recognized the same way as mine was (and these things usually are, I guess?)...so, open up a terminal/console and then su to root and then do this:

(those | -characters are pipes, and at least in my keyboard they come by pressing AltGR and < at the same time)

then copy and post here what you get. if you're lucky, this solves the whole thing and the next step is only to make mounting it a bit easier :)

Thanks,
her it is:

[root@localhost home]# cd /dev
[root@localhost dev]# ls * | grep sd| more
ptysd@
sda@
sda1@
ttysd@
sd:
[root@localhost dev]#

That looks good. I guess your flash disk is at /dev/sda1.
Following b0uncer's advice you could try:

# mkdir /mnt/memstick
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/memstick

Then any files you create in directory /mnt/memstick will be on the flash disk.

Before you remove the stick you should do 'umount /dev/sda1' (as root) so that the file system is properly synchronised.

just as maroonbaboon wrote :) I still don't get where the system gets the numbering for the devices from, because I only had one usb-disk (before plugging it I didn't have any sda files) and when I plugged it in, it was sda4 (instead of sda1, which would have been logical to me since it's not any "fourth device" but the only one...heh..)

I guess there's some reason for that too. but hopefully you got it working :) and here's one more thing to do to make this a bit easier: open your fstab file and edit it (you must be root to do this and you need a text editor for this):

1) with some text-editor, open up fstab file that can be found in /etc/fstab
2) you should see there lines that tell the system about your devices and mounts, say lines like these ones (not exactly the same, but the same way):

#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cd iso9660 user,noauto,unhide 0 0

now there are probably a few of these. now let's add a new line to your memstick, to ease the use of it a bit :) so, to the bottom of the list, start a new line and write it like this (assuming the sda1 really is your stick, as it seems, and that you have already created a directory called /mnt/memstick):

/dev/sda1 /mnt/memstick auto user,noauto,unhide 0 0

(if somebody disagrees about the options, say it, but this is for my stick [or rather was] and it works nicely)

then just save the file and close the editor. if everything went fine, you can now mount your device simply by typing:

mount /mnt/memstick

and umount it with

umount /mnt/memstick

without a need to write /dev/sda1 anymore. also, users should be able to mount it too, not just root as it might have been (this may also depend on something else, like mount-command itself and it's privileges but if it doesnt, then users should be able to mount it)

hopefully this wasn't written in a too complicated way....the basic idea is just that you add the line I wrote above to your /etc/fstab and save it. also, if you use Gnome or KDE that has a menu-entry for mounting a filesystem or something similar handy thing, you can from now on use it for your stick too (because Gnome and KDE and similar things know fstab and use it)

hopefully this helped

USB flash card support in Mandrake 10 Community works out of the box. it uses supermount so you need to enter the /mnt directory and find the directory where the card is auto mounted.

With the card plugged in do

cat /etc/fstab

You should see an entry for the flash card along with the mount point of the card. So fstab is automatically changed when the card is plugged in or removed. Warning, I'm not sure of the correct procedure for removing the card, normally you unmount the device but supermount gets in the way.

The best place to look is in the system log to see what happens when the card is plugged in, do as root

vi /var/log/syslog

press < esc key > then type :!q <return key > to exit vi. You can you any editor instead of vi.

For the device numbering, sda1 or sda4, I think that is set when the partition is created. Old 'IBM format' 100Mb Iomega zip disks came with a DOS filesystem on partition 4, but you could just delete it and recreate as partition 1. Somebody else on LQ reported a flash disk which appeared at /dev/sda (so no partition number at all).

hmm..that's interesting (numbering). tough it doesn't matter what it is, but still..