OK first of all I thought I would be the LAST person to post anything in here, but I took one of my first major steps foreward into the world of Linux.
Just installed Slackware 9.1 a couple days ago, and I've been reading up on how to work in Linux and all online . . . the install was not problem-free but I can't say I've had better luck with OSX or WinXP either, except I knew how to solve THOSE problems.
The setup:
Dual boot system with WinXP Home and Slackware 9.1
3 Partitions
1 NTFS, 1 Linux Swap, 1 Linux
Anyway, the tiny victory I'm mentioning here is about my MP3 player. It's an iRiver iHP-120, which, for those of you who do not know, features a 20gb Toshiba drive and a USB 2.0 interface. Anyway, after installing Linux and understanding that it would be a huge job to set up an ISDN connection when I barely knew how to get my mouse working (2 outta 5 buttons, go me!) , I came to the slow realization that I had no way of sending files between Linux and Windows. Without a FAT32 partition, I was sunk as far as getting drivers and software goes, until I could set up the Internet (I haven't even begun to do that yet)
Enter my MP3 player, which has served me well as a hard drive. In fact, I used it to back up all my files while I formatted and re-installed everything, so I knew I could count on it as a "staging area" between Linux and Windhoes because it was formatted as FAT32.
Anyway, after a large amount of googling and tutorial-surfing, I learned all I needed to know about "mount", and by paying attention to the error messages I found out that it's treated as an SCSI device and so on.
Wish you guys could have seen that hour of frustration I spent with my command line, trying every possible way to mount that bugger. Basically it went something like this:
mount /dev/sda
mount /dev/sda1
mount -t vfat /dev/sda
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1
mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/hd
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/hd
startx
Didn't get far in x anyway, so I went back into the terminal . . . usually it inspires me to see it visually, but in this case it just confused me with all the pretty icons.
As a lifetime Mac OS / Windows user, I had a hard time believing the way to solve something like this EVER would involve making a new folder, but I did anyway, trying "mkdir" with various filenames in /mnt, until eventually I just named the file system, fat32.
After about 50 more tries at the command line, I finally tried mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/fat32
What? No error message?
Hooray! All at once fifty doors were opened and a boatload of files enter my fresh Linux partition, including some much-needed drivers and much-wanted music.
I guess the thing I find most amusing about this is how absolutely trivial it is. This is one of the simplest possible things to do in Linux, but I think pretty much every newbie can relate to typing a hundred different things in the command line, then looking back and realizing how stupid we were.
Cliffs-
1. Dual boot system with no Fat32 partition
2. Completely clueless newbie
3. Sat for ages trying to figure out how to mount HDD mp3 player
4. Finally typed the magic command
5. Profit
mp3 Player in Linux
