[LBo] How do I get my thumb drive to work in Kanotix?

Sat Jul 8 17:47:16 CEST 2006

* ed bujosa <ebujosa at houston.rr.com> [2006-07-08 09:04:23-0500]
> Anita & Stefan,
> 
>             Let me begin by saying thank you for responding to my 
> question.  I'm always blown away by the generosity of some on-line 
> communities but you folks are especially good.  Let me follow that by 
> saying I'm a GUI kind of guy (another MS Win cripple) wanting very badly 
> to become more of a Linux command line kind of a person.  I love Kanotix 
> but only use it because of the generosity (Do I sound like Blanche from 
> "Streetcar"?) of a good friend.  It is time, however, for me to learn 
> how to take care of my own machine.

You have the right attitude I think.  If you have the desire to learn the
command line it can open up an entire new world of control over your system.
Of course, it's not the /only/ way to run a system.  But it does have it's perks
over GUI only.  Once quick for instance that pops to mind is if X stops working
and you can get to your GUI tool.  Then you have to fix it from the command
line and not being at least slightly comfortable at the command line at that
point can be a big hindrance.

So, that being said, it sounds like you want some advice on getting familiar
with the command line?  First, I usually suggest a couple of good print books.
I read Running Linux (Oreilly Press) and A Practical Guide to Linux by Mark
Sobel (both twice) to get me going.  I know there are some good on line sources
too but I'm failing to find the links, so perhaps some of the other good people
here can give a link or two.

One other thing I did was to force myself to use the command line.  It's hard
to do that when you know you can do what you want in 4 seconds with a GUI
rather than reading a man page and figuring out the proper command line.  So,
to counter that I didn't even run X for the first few months I started using
Linux.  I just set the system to boot only to the console and then sat with my
books until I felt comfortable enough to use it day to day.  I don't know if
you want to go to that extreme though.

I too was a Windows Cripple, but I learn to overcome my handicap (mostly). :D

As far as udev and usb-mass storage goes I'd personally take a simpler
approach before getting into udev.  First, before connecting your pen drive
open a command prompt and type "dmesg".  dmesg prints the last few messages
from the kernel.  It doesn't matter what it says at this point just make a note
of what the last few lines look like then insert your pen drive, wait a moment
or two, then type dmesg again and see what is different.  It should show you
the device the kernel chose to make your pen drive, assuming that usb-mass
storage is working correctly.

For example, before putting in my pen drive the last few lines of my dmesg
looks like this:

agpgart: Found an AGP 3.5 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 8x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 8x mode
SMB connection re-established (-5)

After putting in my pen drive I get this from dmesg:

agpgart: Found an AGP 3.5 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 8x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 8x mode
SMB connection re-established (-5)
usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 3
usb 6-1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
usb 6-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 3
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
  Vendor:           Model: USB Flash Memory  Rev: 1.00
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
SCSI device sdb: 2002944 512-byte hdwr sectors (1026 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdb: 2002944 512-byte hdwr sectors (1026 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 0b 00 00 08
sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
usb-storage: device scan complete

So, if you look at the 3rd line up from the bottom you can see it make my
pendrive sdb1.  So, to mount it, I just use the mount command:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/hd

Assuming I have a hd directory in my /mnt.  You may want to use whatever GUI
tools you have at your disposal to do the mounting.  Or maybe you'll be luck
enough to have a distro that will just put an icon on your desktop for you when
it sees the new pendrive.

I think getting the device name is the first step to getting it working.  Once
you know it's being setup at that basic level, then you should be able to mess
with udev to do nice things like having a consistently named symlink pointing
to whatever device udev decides to make it.  That way you don't need to mess
with dmesg.

I still find udev rules a bit confusing because I don't do them often enough.
I use these links help with udev:

http://webpages.charter.net/decibelshelp/LinuxHelp_UDEVPrimer.html
http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UdevHowTo
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7316

Hopefully I didn't scare  you away with all this!

-- 
Brian Reichert
http://rignesnet.tzo.com

Justice is incidental to law and order.
		-- J. Edgar Hoover
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