I am having problems mounting a 1Gb Lexar Sport USB key on my Dell workstation running RedHat Enterprise Linux, Version 3. The USB key has FAT formatting. I have tried to mount the device using:
mount -tvfat -oumask=0000 /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbkey
Note that the /mnt/usbkey directory was created prior to mounting the device. The mount command executed without any errors. I copied a text file to the usb key but my windows machine did not see it. I was also unable to read text files saved from my Windows machine with my Linux machine. I have searched for recent threads on this topic but did not see any good matches. I will be very grateful for any help that can be provided.

Thanks,
Trevor

Welcome to LQ!

Did you unmount the drive after you copied the file to it?

Try adding the following line to your /etc/fstab:
Then you can mount the drive using "mount /mnt/usbkey"

I hope this helps
--Ian

Ian,

Thanks for your reply. I added the following line to my /etc/fstab.
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbkey vfat rw,suid,dev,noexec,noauto,user,async 1 2
I then mounted the usbkey using "mount /mnt/usbkey". The directory list on the device was:
bootlog.txt
command.com
config.sys
dell (a directory)
dir.lst
io.sys
msdos.sys
seal.exe
seal.ini
upkeep.lst
I do not know how these files were copied to my usbkey. Next, I used "cp" to copy a text file (test.f) to the usbkey and unmounted the key using "umount /mnt/usbkey". I removed the usbkey and plugged it into my Windows machine. Windows recognized the usbkey, but no files could be seen on the device. I then copied a text file from my Windows machine onto the usbkey. I removed the usbkey from the Windows machine and connected it to the Linux machine. I mounted the usbkey but only saw the files listed above (along with test.f). I have read that a usbkey could be used to transfer text files between Linux and Windows machines, so it appears that I still have a problem.

Thanks again for your help,
Trevor

Success!!!

I changed my fstab entry to read:

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbkey vfat rw,suid,dev,noexec,noauto,user,async 1 2


I am now able to read the files on the usbkey.