Configuring Fedora Core 4 & USB Flash drives?

[Robin Laing]

Tim wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 08:55 -0800, tlhackque wrote:
> 
>>OK, here's fstab.  Vanilla - untouched by human hands.  This IS with
>>the drive in & (manually) mounted.  So fstab-sync isn't making a
>>"managed" entry for some reason.
>>
>>/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       ext3   defaults        1 1
>>LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3   defaults        1 2
>>none                    /dev/pts                devpts gid=5,mode=620  0 0
>>none                    /dev/shm                tmpfs  defaults        0 0
>>none                    /proc                   proc   defaults        0 0
>>none                    /sys                    sysfs  defaults        0 0
>>/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap   defaults        0 0
>>/dev/fd0                /media/floppy           auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
>>/dev/hdc                /media/cdrecorder       auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
>>/dev/hda                /media/cdrom            auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
> 
> 
> No sign of an entry for the drive, so I guess by "manually mounted",
> you're typing in commands in the CLI, rather than referring to details
> you've written into the fstab file.
> 
> For automounting, it's going to be dependent on one or more services
> (haldaemon, at least).
> 
> 
>>Not clear how to make an entry, as drives seem to get
>>different sd? names assigned.  Wouldn't mind the blue drive always
>>being a certain mount point.  Of course, some are vfat, some aren't -
>>so "auto" would be the fstype of choice.
>>
>>Doesn't matter if the mount point exists or not. 
>>
>>So is the "USB Flash Driver" in your rule a generic answer for all USB
>>Flash devices, or is it a function of the specific
>>model/mfgr that one plugs in?
> 
> 
> It's discovered from my drive, others *may* be the same.  I used a tool
> to query the information present in my drive (see the page I referred
> you to, before):  <http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html>
> 
> There are other "usbview" tools which can show you such information.
> 
> 
>>Looking at the reference material - wow!  Infinitely flexible, but all
>>I wanted was to just plug in my drive and have it work.  Looks like I
>>have a lot of digging to do (and yet another scriping language to
>>learn.) 
> 
> 
> Yes, I thought the same.  I left things as they were, manually
> configured, until I was given a USB drive for Christmas, then had to
> face the problem of correctly/sensibly mounting the USB flash drive and
> my digital camera at the same time.
> 
> I have two identical motherboards, with nearly the same FC4 installation
> on each, they both auto-mount, but don't behave the same way.  On one,
> the USB drive's activity lead pulses regularly, all of the time (whether
> mounted or not), on the other, it only blinks when I expect it to (when
> I know there's drive activity).
> 

None of my usb drives are listed in /etc/fstab and they mount with no 
problems.  Same for any camera that I have attached.  I get an icon on 
the desktop.

My USB sticks are labeled and come up with the label name instead of 
some generic name.  This allows me to know which is which.

Now, I wonder if the drive is configured to work with Fedora.  I had 
an issue with one drive and I actually had to reformat it to work with 
Fedora.  The instructions were on the USB drives makers site.

Look at any messages in /var/log/messages and see what they say when 
you plug in your drive.

As root, in a terminal window type in
   tail -f /var/log/messages
and watch what is displayed when you plug in your stick.

You may get a message about an unrecognized file system or unsupported 
file system.  This is what happened on mine and I had to basically 
setup the stick as I would a new drive.