Mount usb devices

Rick Stevens ricks at nerd.com
Fri Nov 21 00:23:11 UTC 2008


Dave Feustel wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 02:26:28PM -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
>> FFS is the BSD "fast file system" (yes, the Amiga also had an FFS, but
>> since the OP said "BSD", I'm going to discount the Amiga).  I think
>> Linux' UFS filesystem can mount it but I'm not sure.  If it can, it
>> should automount, but UFS may not recognize FFS markers even if it can
>> mount it.  You can try forcing UFS to see if it'll work.
>>
>> First, make a directory somewhere where you want to mount it.  A good
>> place would be in either /media or /mnt.  I'd do it in /mnt to leave
>> /media pristine for automounts:
>>
>> 	mkdir /mnt/test
>>
>> Do a "dmesg" just before you plug in the drive, plug it in, wait a few
>> seconds and do "dmesg" again.  The additional lines from dmesg should
>> refer to the device you plugged in.  You'll probably see something like
>> this:
>>
>> 	sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
>> 	 sdb: sdb1
>>
>> (that's from plugging in a FLASH drive).  In this case, the drive
>> itself is sdb (/dev/sdb) and it contains one partition, sdb1 (or
>> /dev/sdb1).  Then:
>>
>> 	mount -t ufs /dev/sdXY /path/to/your/mount/point
>>
>> In this case, "mount -t ufs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/test
>>
>> If it mounts up, voila!  If not, either you didn't specify the right
>> partition or UFS doesn't mount FFS stuff.  I don't have any FFS drives
>> handy or I'd test it for you.
> 
> Thanks for this. I recognise the stuff from dmesg. I was trying to
> mount the ffs disk because it is handy. I have another flash device
> that I would like to partition as a 2 or 3 partition drive, mkfs
> and then copy data to it from (hd0,0). Then I want to recreate
> hd0 as a multi-partition drive, install 64-bit f9, and then copy
> the data back from the flash drive.
> 
> The stumbling block for me was that I didn't understand how the usb
> devices are named and accessed in Fedora before they are mounted. 
> I think I understand naming now.

Ah!  Yes, virtually all disk-like devices are treated as if they were
SCSI.  "/dev/sd" is the prefix for all such devices, "sd" meaning "SCSI
disk".  Then there's a drive designator which will be the letter "a" 
through "zz" (yes, I've seen such two-letter things...typically on big
FC disk farms), then a decimal number, 1 through 15 for the partition
number.  So, the fifth partition on the third drive found would be
/dev/sdc5 (and that would actually be INSIDE /dev/sdc4, see below).

Additional note: Partition numbers 1 through 4 are reserved for
"primary" partitions.  One primary partition can also be an "extended" 
partition and partition 4 is always used for such a beast.  Partitions 5
through 15 will always refer to partitions INSIDE that extended
partition (partition 4), so don't freak out when you see the sector list
for partition 4 overlap those for partitions 5 through 15 in the output 
of "fdisk" or "sfdisk".

Probably more data than you need, but I'm nothing if not thorough (some
would say "bombastic" or "long winded").
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
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