finding device for USB drive

365matias · #1 23rd March 2011, 09:42 PM

I'm still learning about fedora so I have to ask a basic question.

How can I find the device (e.g., sda1, sda2 ...) to use so I can use a USB drive?
I do not have access to the fedora gui.

thanks,
M

jpollard · #2 23rd March 2011, 10:02 PM

The problem is that the sd names are generated in order of identification.

To see what partitions you can mount you can look in /proc/partitions.

If you give the filesystem a label, you won't have to hunt up the "new" device name, but can mount by label -- "mount LABEL=name /mnt".
This can simplify things a bit, because you can name filesystem for the function it serves - "backup", or "backup1" "backup2", "music"...

bodhi.zazen · #3 23rd March 2011, 10:25 PM

You can list your devices via

Code:

fdisk -l

You can use other tools as well, blkid will give you the uuid.

Assuming you do not have multiple usb devices , should be fairly easy to identify.

365matias · #4 26th March 2011, 01:31 AM

fdisk -l yields:
/dev/sda1 ... Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 ... HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 ... HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 ... Extended
/dev/sda5 ... Linux
/dev/sda6 ... Linux LVM

I was not sure how to identify which one of these is the USB.
I tried: mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb
I did ls /mnt/usb and this gave me:
autoexec.bat
autoexec.up
command.com
config.sys
config.up
...
But, none of the files from the usb-drive were listed. So, what's going on with this?

PabloTwo · #5 26th March 2011, 02:01 AM

The output from fdisk -l that you showed is your hard disk drive, /dev/sda. You are showing no USB storage device. It would have been better if you had copied and pasted the entire output from your fdisk command. If you plugged a USB storage device into a USB port, such as USB thumb drive, it should should show in the output of fdisk -l as /dev/sdb.

Here is the output, excerpted, from fdisk -l after I plug in a USB 1GB thumb drive.

Code:

Disk /dev/sdb: 1031 MB, 1031798272 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 125 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x91f72d24

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1         126     1007584    6  FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(124, 254, 63) logical=(125, 112, 50)

To mount that on mount point /mnt/usb, I would:

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb -o rw,uid=500,gid=500

Each storage device will be identified in order /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc. The number at the end indicates the partition number on that device.

didier83 · #6 26th March 2011, 08:31 AM

First you have to detect if your drive has been correctly detected.

1-connect your drive
2- use dmesg command

you should get something like:

Quote:

[24726.254020] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
[24726.369883] usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=10d6, idProduct=1101
[24726.369889] usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[24726.369892] usb 1-4: Product: HS USB FlashDisk
[24726.369895] usb 1-4: Manufacturer: ACTIONS
[24726.369898] usb 1-4: SerialNumber: 4512482adf0fe
[24726.373777] scsi16 : usb-storage 1-4:1.0
[24727.374892] scsi 16:0:0:0: Direct-Access ACTIONS HS USB FlashDisk 2.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[24727.376305] sd 16:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[24727.377899] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] 16733105 512-byte logical blocks: (8.56 GB/7.97 GiB)
[24727.378692] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[24727.378701] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 c0 00 00
[24727.378706] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.384033] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.384046] sd[24726.254020] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
[24726.369883] usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=10d6, idProduct=1101
[24726.369889] usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[24726.369892] usb 1-4: Product: HS USB FlashDisk
[24726.369895] usb 1-4: Manufacturer: ACTIONS
[24726.369898] usb 1-4: SerialNumber: 4512482adf0fe
[24726.373777] scsi16 : usb-storage 1-4:1.0
[24727.374892] scsi 16:0:0:0: Direct-Access ACTIONS HS USB FlashDisk 2.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[24727.376305] sd 16:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[24727.377899] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] 16733105 512-byte logical blocks: (8.56 GB/7.97 GiB)
[24727.378692] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[24727.378701] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 c0 00 00
[24727.378706] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.384033] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.384046] sdb:
[24727.400059] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.400072] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
b:
[24727.400059] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[24727.400072] sd 16:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

jpollard · #7 26th March 2011, 12:35 PM

Possibly the easiest way is to "cat /proc/partitions" before you plug the disk in.

Plug the disk in.

cat /proc/partitions again.

The last entry is normally the new disk.

If you need to you can save the /proc/partitions file first, then diff that against the /proc/partitions after you plug it in. The new entry is the only thing that will be printed.

365matias · #8 26th March 2011, 03:12 PM

Solved. thanks.
m.