I am puzzled as to why I cannot mount a memory stick as a mass storage device. The particular device belongs to my daughter and she uses it on Windows XP. I have Slackware current installed on the same box. I already have a mount point set-up for a digital camera that mounts perfectly at /mnt/camera on /dev/sdb1 (sda1 is my SATA drive).

lsmod shows the usb-storage driver. Looking /proc/bus/usb/devices shows details of the device and mentions the usb-storage driver.

I have another box with Zenwalk 1.2 installed and I have the same problem. Any ideas why the device won't mount?

Thanks.

What error message do you get when you try to mount it? It's really hard to guess what's wrong without it. Is there anything wrong in "dmesg" when you try to mount it?

bash-3.00# mount /dev/sdb1 -t vfat /mnt/hd/
mount: special device /dev/sdb1 does not exist

There is nothing with a time stamp in /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog or dmesg that relates to the above

What is the output from the command ' /sbin/fdisk -l '?
What is the mount command you are trying?
Post output of the command ' /sbin/lsmod ' and ' /sbin/lsusb '?

Brian1

Are you sure this drive is assigned to /dev/sdb1? Plug in the drive and type "dmesg", on the few last lines, it should tell you which device it is using.

Or you might want to try "cfdisk /dev/sdb" to take a look at the partition table? Most flash drive don't have partition (so you have to load the whole /dev/sdb) I believe.

From what I've heard, the "usb-storage" driver shouldn't be enabled as it often causes problems with some flash drives and stuff (even though that's exactly what it's meant for. . . hmm. . .)

Why is it enabled in the first place? I use Slack, too, and it wasn't enabled by default on my machine, I'm pretty sure. . .

I am not in front of the box at the moment (I will take a look tonight and post back further findings).

From what I recall, the tail of the dmesg output had no reference to any type of usb mass storage device.

The mount options I have tried are as follows:

mount /dev/sdb1 -t vfat /mnt/hd

mount /dev/sdb1 -t auto /mnt/hd

These both give the same error message noted above. I have also tried:

mount /dev/sdb -t vfat /mnt/hd

This does not give an error message, but upon investigation the media is not mounted ie. ls /mnt/hd/ draws a blank.

As mentioned in my original post we do have a camera in the house that is mounted with:

mount /dev/sdb1 -t vfat /mnt/camera

I guess that is where the usb-storage driver fits in.

Well, I decided to pop the stick in prior to boot to see what happened. The section from dmesg:

usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team
Vendor: Verbatim Model: USB Drive Rev: 2.00
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
SCSI device sdb: 128000 512-byte hdwr sectors (66 MB)
sdb: assuming Write Enabled
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdb: 128000 512-byte hdwr sectors (66 MB)
sdb: assuming Write Enabled
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table
Attached scsi removable disk sdb at scsi4, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi generic sg1 at scsi4, channel 0, id 0, lun 0, type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

I then managed to mount the device with:

mount /dev/sdb -t auto /mnt/hd



Now I need to work out why it will not mount if plugged in after boot

Maybe the modules aren't loading properly.

hello,

got the same problem... the stick is only readable when plugged in on boot. I'm using Fedora core 4 (64-bit) but it seems lousy... changing back to SuSE again!!! Anyway : trying out the automount config files didn't work out. when not plugged in on boot I didn't even get a mounting point in /media. Any Idea?

greetings,

Ronald

Ronald, I know this does not really help you, but since I did my little experiment and got all of the details from dmesg it has somehow kicked my system into action. The command that did not previously work, now does I have even entered the details into the /etc/fstab so that a normal user can mount the device with mount /mnt/usb-stick. I am totally puzzled by all of this but it is probably worth taking a deep breath and logically step through the process from what works i.e. having it mounted from boot.

Best of luck.

hello Alan,

Thanks, but I did more investigation. Dmesg gives some very strange output :

ehci_hcd 0000:00:02.1 : port 5 reset error (-110)
hub 1-0:1.0: hub_port_status failed (-32)

After 5 times i get :
hub 1-0:1.0: cannot enable port 5. Maybe the USB cable is bad?

rubbish, of course : it works under windoze2000

Any idea what's wrong?

greetings,

Ronald

Ronald,

I am afraid I am not a techie (though I am sure there will be plenty reading this ) but is your usb sub-system working with other usb devices?

Hello Alan,

keyboard and mouse both in USB-port and working. Printer doesn't work in USB but that could be a driver problem... it's a Samsung CLP-510N.

Greetings,

Ronald

I just tried to set up a usb memory stick as well and ran across the same problem. If i plug it in, then boot i'm able to mount it, otherwise it doesn't seem to have a device node.

I might be stating the obvious, but i found that if you modprobe sd_mod then look at dmesg it will tell you where the node is. How can you set linux up to do this automatically? I thought i had configured auto loading of modules anyways.. I guess i could just explicitly load sd_mod on boot, but this doesn't seem like the best way.

Any ideas?