Mounting USB Pen Drive in Mandrake 10.1

[AlexK]

Hi,
I am trying to mount my Sandiskk pendrive in Mandrake 10.1 and so far it is not working. I have googled the topic and it seems that some drives just don't work. I was wonderin if it was a problem with my fstab or mtab files. Mandrakes "Storage Devices" applet detects a usb drive on /proc/bus/usb, but how do I mount it?

my mtab file contains the following line, is it right?
none /proc/bus/usb fat rw 0 0

and my fstab file contains
/proc/bus/usb

Also I have noticed that other posts are talking about someting called /dev/sda, however I have no such thing in my /dev directory.

Thanks in advance.
AlexK

[UgoDeschamps]

Hi

run this command

fdisk -l

FDISK -L gives you all active partition that are curently "on" if you see your USB device its a good sign. You will then be able to determine the location of the device

dev/sda, dev/sdb, dev/scsi... depens on many factor...
from there, you will be able to mount it with the proper command...

mkdir /mnt/pendrive
mount /dev/<device> /mnt/pendrive

For more information about mounting USB flash drive please have a look at this tutorial

[AlexK]

The output from the fdisk -l command is as follows with the usb drive plugged in:

[root@Mercury /]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2354 18908473+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2355 3649 10402087+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 2355 3066 5719108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 3067 3129 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 3130 3649 4176868+ 83 Linux

However I noticed that, if the usb drive is plugged in when linux boots up, I can mount it and view files on the drive. When this happens, there exists the /dev/sda1 and also /mnt/removeable dorectories. And there are enteries in mtab and fstab pointing to /dev/sda1.

But if i choose to log out and re-login then the usb drive is no longer detected. There is no entry for the drive in fstab or mtab and /dev/sda no longer exists.

[sauro]

Alex,
I just posted something that you might fing useful:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/topic-39805.html.

For your benefit, it states:
«
Until a short while ago, I had a similar problem for accessing a Pendisk, when I upgraded from Mdke 9.2 to Mdke 10.x.
I still had no oportunity to find out the technical explanations, but my problem disappeared when I stopped insisting on mounting /dev/sdaX and started mount directly /dev/sda!
Now everything works fine, both with Mdke Supermount and with normal mounting. Note that the kernel version I am using is 2.6.
You could try something similar. As you seem to have more USB devices, try in succession /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc...
»