RH9 - USB Stick

[goatieau]

Hi Folks, I have recently installed Redhat 9 and have found problems mounting my USB Stick Memory Drive. I usually mount it to the CD-ROM mount point ( /mnt/cdrom) with no ill effects ( I admitt I haven't needed to use both the CD and the stick at the same time yet). The problem occurs when I try to unmount the memory stick, it appears to umount the CDROM mount point, but not the device itself. When I go to access the CDROM mount point it tells me it's not mounted - seems right o.k.? - but after I remove the memory stick, I get a error message saying that there is a disk read failure? . This in itself dosen't seem too strange as the disk is no longer connected. But why is RH9 still looking for the device if it is unmounted. The following lines are the commands I use to mount and unmount the device.

mount /dev/sda /mnt/cdrom
umount /mnt/cdrom

This last command seems to unmount the device but as stated above gives the error message (when in text mode anyway).

Does anyone know the correct commands for mounting a USB drive under Red Hat 9?

Thanks in advance.

[Siliconjunkie]

The commands are the same as any other mount.

Try creating it's own mountpoint and see what happens.

[goatieau]

Thanks SiliconJunkie but the problem still occurs. After I unmount the drive the LED indicator still indicates connectivity and a message is recieved after the umount command that /dev/sda is not mounted. When I physically disconect the drive ( inbetween LED flashes - I'm always concerned this will damage the drive, but it hasn't yet) I get that error message that reads:
sda: READ CAPACITY failed
<output ommitted>
unable to read partion table

mount /dev/sda /mnt/usb
umount /dev/sda /mnt/usb
umount: /dev/sda: not mounted

Any other suggestions?

[samwichse]

Out of curiosity, have you tried formatting the stick in a windows machine? I got a Lexar JumpDrive and it kept acting weird with Linux (both kernels 2.4 and 2.6), it turns out there are people all over the internet having trouble with it, and a fresh (non-factory) formatting takes care of them all.

For one thing, I'm pretty sure you need to mount/unmount /dev/sda1

The sda is the device, the 1 is the partition.

It should be something like:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

See if that works for you.

[goatieau]

Thanks Samwichse,
the stick is actually formatted and contains Windows data. I wasn't sure at first if Red Hat 9 would allow me to see this data but the drive works fine when mounted. It is the umount command that gives me grief. Although RH9 seems to unmount the device the LED indicator on the drive indicates the contrary as well as the error message stated above.

I tried using that mount /dev/sda(#) /mnt/usb command and recieved the same error for #=1-4:
mount: /dev/sda(#) is not a valid block device
For mount /dev/sda0 /mnt/usb I recieved this error:
mount: special device /dev/sda0 does not exist

Thanks for your input though.

The battle continues.

[zskillz]

have you made any progress? I'm having one of the same problems...

-Z

[goatieau]

No not so far. I'm tinking it's probably either got to do withthe stick itself (+RH9) or maybe something to do with the kernel version I am running. I will post any updates on this thread for you and others to read.

Cheers
Goatieau

[lynch]

What's your etc/fstab look like?
Also, a look at the relevant permissions could be worthwhile.
You can also take a look at a mini-howto that crouse posted at usalug .
HTH
lynch