Mount usb devices

Dave Feustel dfeustel at mindspring.com
Fri Nov 21 00:57:48 UTC 2008


On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 04:23:11PM -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
> 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").

Thanks again for the info above. This is the kind of info that I
understand but which seems to be missing from my f9 bible. Linux
device names are quite different from device names in OpenBSD which
I had been using for several years before I started using Linux
(Fedora 9 and Suse 11).




More information about the fedora-list mailing list