Hello All,
I am a linux newbie (installed RH 8.0 about a month ago), using an old P166 with RH 8.0. Overall, my experience has been not bad, but I am having a few problems, and I would appreciate any advice you could give me. I apologize if I am asking too many questions - I need to ask them while I have internet access.
Linux seems to assume that you have internet access, and my home computer does not. Thus most of my problems involve taking files from windows machines to Linux machines.
Questions: 1) how do I transfer files from my VFAT partition to my Linux partition?
2) How do I mount a floppy so that it will read the files from a windows machine?
3) I have a Sony Microvault USB device (32 MB). Using this would solve many of my problems. I have tried mounting it using every file type I can find, and the only one which appeared to work was something like "usbdev" file type (I apologize for not writing it down; I can write it down if it is needed). However, even though I could ls the directory, none of the files in it were there. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you in advance for any help rendered.

Vfat should be working by default in RH 8. Assuming you know at least how to start up a terminal, open one up and type:
su -
Enter root's password

Now you are root. Now we are going to try to mount your VFAT partition so you can access it while in linux:
mount -t /dev/hdx /mnt/vfat

A few things have to take place before that'll work though. First, the directory (mount point) /mnt/vfat has to exist. We create that by typing:
mkdir /mnt/vfat
Second, /dev/hdx is not an actual device. It's a representation of the actual device/partition that you are trying to mount. You will have to figure out which partition that is. I usually suggest using the following command:
/sbin/fdisk -l (/SBIN/FDISK -L lowercase)
Look for the vfat partition (might be /dev/hda1)

2. I am pretty sure it's the same way ( I don't use floppies):
mkdir /mnt/floppy (this probably already exists)
mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy (should work)

3. Those should be able to mounted as USB Mass Storage Devices. To do that, you probably are going to have to plug in the device, then try:
mkdir /mnt/sony
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sony
And hope for the best. There are ways of finding out which device it is, but they can get complex. We'll try easy first, and move on from there if needed.

Welcome to LQ! If you have questions on setting up your internet in Linux you might consider starting another post or searching this site for answers, that will help you tremendously.

Cool

Thanks MasterC/Cool,

I did as you suggested, and managed to mount all three items I was trying to. For some reason it didn't work the first time I tried each one, and then the second time I mounted each I could ls the files. NEways, its working now, and I am very happy. Thank you very much. I will be sure to return here next time I have a Linux question I can't answer on my own.

Krysith

You're Welcome, and I'm glad it worked

Cool (btw, my name isn't cool I just sorta "sign" with that now that I've grown it into a habit )

Thanks for the help MasterC. Maybe you could help me with an extension of this problem?
The mounting of the floppy and harddrive are working fine. However, when I mount the usb storage device, I often (but not always) get the message, "sda1 is not a valid block device" (not sure if quote is exact). I can mount the device as a usbdevfs file type without problems, but of course, that is fairly useless to me. I seem to have been able to mount it before (also using "mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/microvault), but it won't work now. I did umount it before I unplugged it, so I don't think that is the problem. It seems like some process is using the device. I used a command in bash to see if any processes were using usbdevfs (thinking that might be tying it up), and there was one in /proc/usb, even after I had umounted it (umount -t usbdevfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/microvault). I tried to kill the process, using kill pid 183, but it didn't work (I frankly don't entirely understand this, I was just trying). I think adding a line to my /etc/fstab might help, but I don't know what exactly to add. I'm trying. Do you have any suggestions?

If you read through one of your log files (either /var/log/messages or dmesg) you can usually see what has been chosen as your device. Also, to umount you only need to specify the mount point:
umount /mnt/microvault
To kill something you send a signal to a pid, so:
ps aux (to find the pid) then:
kill -15 183 (or kill -9 183) man kill man pid might help.

As for putting it in your fstab, sure:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/microvault vfat users,noauto,umask=002 0 0

Might work. However, you would first wanna see if this is going to be stable. I personally don't plug and unplug my card reader so mine never changes. usbdevfs is (AFAIK) just something that allows you to see what usb devices are plugged in. You mount it up in proc usually and then cat /proc/usbdevfs or whatever to view what's plugged in.

I know none of this really helps a whole lot, but it will at least help you to decipher out what's going on.

Basically:
dmesg | grep sda
OR
dmesg | less

Cool

Thanks again, MasterC. You are truly the master (bows).

Using dmesg, I figured out that the reason it worked some of the time was that I had typoed sda1 to sda, which was actually the device that I was trying to mount. Go figure. I added sda to my /etc/fstab, and it mounts quite easily now. Thank you very much!

Krysith

Glad it worked for ya, Post back if you run into problems again, be glad to help.

Cool