[richag99]

I'm starting to learn Gentoo. I came from an automount distro and want to know how I can determine what device my flash drive is .
I've tried "mount /dev/sda /mnt/usb" and also sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4.
This is the partial contents of /etc/fstab
/dev/sda1 /boot ext2
/dev/sda3 / ext3
/dev/sda2 none swap
/dev/sda4 /home ext3
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom audo
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto

I hope this is enough info to get me on the right track. Thanks in advance. Bye
regards richag77

[wildpossum]

In a xterm run "sudo tail -f /var/log/messages"

The insert the USB device into the USB slot.

The message file will tell you what Linux has decided your usb device is called, and where it has mounted it.

Run "mount" and you will get a printout of that's mounted and where.

Once mounted, you can read & write to it just like another drive by the users nominated to use that device. So before you withdraw it from the USB slot, you need to do "sudo umount DEV" where DEV is the device mount point that the system mounted the USB device.

The /etc/fstab file only holds the permanent loading file system, hence USB mounting is transient, and does not keep an entry in the /etc/fstab file.

[i92guboj]

Originally Posted by wildpossum

In a xterm run "sudo tail -f /var/log/messages"

Not really, sudo is not installed by default.

Just use "su" to change to root. And anyway, you don't even need that. You can just use "dmesg" as a regular user.

The insert the USB device into the USB slot.

The message file will tell you what Linux has decided your usb device is called, and where it has mounted it.

Run "mount" and you will get a printout of that's mounted and where.

Again no. Gentoo doesn't come preconfigured to mount anything, unless you set up ivman or something similar.

This wiki seems to be up to date on a quick overview.

HOWTO USB Mass Storage Device - Gentoo Linux Wiki

The /etc/fstab file only holds the permanent loading file system, hence USB mounting is transient, and does not keep an entry in the /etc/fstab file.

Not necesarily. If you don't like graphical enviromnets like kde or gnome, and you don't set up ivman (I don't, because it has too many flaws) then it's handy to have the entry on fstab, so you can just write "mount pen" instead of having to write a full mount line like "mount -tvfat /dev/sdd1 /mnt/pen". Same for cdroms, dvd's and sshfs filesystems that I use a lot.

You will need to setup an udev rule so the given device is always named with the same device node, otherwise, the line in fstab will be useless if you plug many usb devices on different orders each time.

[richag99]

Thanks a lot guys. I didn't have sudo but was able to use the "tail -f /var/log/messages" to find out the device name and now I am up and running. Thanks again. Bye
Regards richag99

[Delta_Echo]

Insert the drive then issue these arguments to the bash shell.

 
su --login
fdisk -l

Look for a device that you knwo isn't a harddrive.
Lets just say that that device would be /dev/sdb1

mkdir /gentoo/mnt/Flash
mount /dev/sdb1 /gentoo/mnt/Flash
cd /gentoo/mnt/Flash

Note: the directory MIGHT be /mnt/gentoo! Not sure

Goodluck