Howto: Mount a USB device in SuSE Linux

I have a Kingston USB flash drive that does not automatically mount itself on my SLES server on occasion.  TID 7000951 explains how to mount the drive manually:

1) From a terminal, run:

lsmod |grep usb  make sure usb_storage is loaded.  If it is not, run:

modprobe usb-storage

2) Plug the USB device in and run dmesg.  The results will look like:

USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access CRUCIAL USB Flash Disk 2.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
ready
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 1017856 512-byte hardware sectors (521 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 1017856 512-byte hardware sectors (521 MB)
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdd: sdd1 <– THIS IS THE DEVICE NAME
sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

Look for the kernel device name, in this case, /dev/sdd, with a partition on /dev/sdd1

3) Mount volume manually by running:

mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt

Access the USB drive at /mnt

To unmount the USB drive run:

umount /mnt

Posted in Linux, howto. Tags: , , , . 3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Howto: Mount a USB device in SuSE Linux”

  1. Leroy Glinchy Says:

    You can also put the lines into /etc/fstab:

    /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb auto noauto,user,rw 0 0

    Then you can do:

    mount /usb

    instead of the long line like above.

    You can get rid of the modprobe line by doing this:

    Edit /etc/sysconfig/kernel and make sure

    INITRD_MODULES=”usb-storage OTHER MODULES”

    Note, OTHER MODULES means that there are going to be other modules, you don’t ever actually type OTHER MODULES there.

  2. Gordon Hilliard Says:

    Hi Julie,

    thanks for that, don’t you just love Linux? Someone has usually solved the problem for you.

    Best Regards

    Gordon

  3. xrayspex Says:

    well, i hate to be a bitch but problems like mounting a flash drive simply do not appear in Windows. otherwise i agree with gordon. i love linux, but certainly not for the way it handles my usb key.


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