I, like it seems many others, are having some trouble with my portable MP3 player. It use to mount without a problem but suddenly it's gone. I have an external USB harddrive which mounts OK and the MP3 player works fine under Windows.
My question is how would I know which device (/dev/sdxy) my MP3 player is connected as. (hope you understand what I mean).
My thought is that maybe things are OK but the information in /etc/fstab is wrong and need to be corrected.

Thanks in advance

twallstr

If you don't have anything connected it'll go /dev/sda, but if you have another device connected, like an external hdd it'll be /dev/sdb and the hard drive will be /dev/sda. It's pretty much first come first serve from what i see.

/dev/sda doesn't work for me. I need to specify /dev/sda1 in fstab to be able to mount my USB flash drive

Check the output from dmesg after connecting the device.
Example: (Connecting my usb-memory)

usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
usb-storage: device found at 2
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
Vendor: SanDisk Model: Cruzer Mini Rev: 0.1
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
usb-storage: device scan complete
SCSI device sda: 501759 512-byte hdwr sectors (257 MB)
sda: assuming Write Enabled
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 501759 512-byte hdwr sectors (257 MB)
sda: assuming Write Enabled
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

In this case, I need to mount /dev/sda1 (first partition on the memory).
If you have a recent kernel and udev, you can use udev rules to create a device-specific alias.

usb 1-8: new high speed USB device using address 2
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Vendor: Model: USB BAR Rev: 1.13
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
SCSI device sda: 253952 512-byte hdwr sectors (130 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
USB Mass Storage device found at 2
usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
SELinux: initialized (dev sda1, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts

kernel 2.6.9, udev installed...
tell me more!!

Have a look here:
http://www.reactivated.net/udevrules.php

be warned that not all mp3 players work. I can mount mine, but only because it has a 256M card in it, i can't access the 128M built in, says it's not a correct block device or whatever that message is, but the 256 work great and that's more then enough for 4 cd's. Yeah you're right i think i do mount it with /dev/sda1.