got "must specify FS type" upon trying to mount flash drive

foampile · #1 21st January 2012, 12:46 AM

i tried to mount my flash drive:

1. mkdir /thmb
2. mount /dev/sdb /thmb

then i got the error

once i did

1. mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb
2. mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /thmb

it wiped out my entire thumb drive !!

WTF?!

---------- Post added at 12:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 AM ----------

the question being how do i mount a USB drive with data from another OS so that i can read it in F16 without having to format it in Fedora

PabloTwo · #2 21st January 2012, 12:48 AM

Yeah, reformatting a fat32 partition to ext3 will do that every time.

nonamedotc · #3 21st January 2012, 12:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by foampile

once i did

1. mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb
2. mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb /thmb

it wiped out my entire thumb drive !!

WTF?!

---------- Post added at 12:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 AM ----------

the question being how do i mount a USB drive with data from another OS so that i can read it in F16 without having to format it in Fedora

You should have done only the second step above after creating that /thumb directory. mkfs 'means' make filesystem which is used to create linux partitions. No wonder your thumb drive was wiped clean!

---------- Post added at 06:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 PM ----------

I suggest looking at the man pages before executing commands on the terminal (particularly commands like mkfs)

foampile · #4 21st January 2012, 12:51 AM

cool, thanks. luckily, it wasn't any critical data (otherwise i wouldn't have been so adventurous trying)

PabloTwo · #5 21st January 2012, 12:54 AM

Had you done:

Code:

mkdir /thmb
mount /dev/sdb1 /thmb -t vfat -o rw

You wouldn't have shot yourself in the foot. Notice the "-t vfat" part in the command line? That is specifying a filesystem type. "-t auto" would have worked just as well. The error message said nothing about "you must create a FS type"..

Code:

man mount

foampile · #6 21st January 2012, 01:09 AM

who you callin fat ??

---------- Post added at 01:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:00 AM ----------

PabloTwo · #7 21st January 2012, 01:18 AM

Most of the Desktop Environments for Linux just auto-mount USB thumb drives when plugged in, and mount them to /media/LABEL_NAME. On my F16 XFCE machines, upon inseting a USB thumb drive, a new icon appears on the dekstop, though it's not auto mounted. I just right-click on it and select "mount volume", and it's then accessible. When I'm on the laptop (running init 3 console) then I have to manually mount my thumb drives.

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media -t vfat -o rw,uid=1000

You'll probably want to reformat your thumb drive back to "FAT", so it can be used on Windows machines as well.

Code:

mkfs.vfat -n Label_Name /dev/sdb1

It must not be mounted at the time. Assumes /dev/sdb is really the thumb drive and not a second hdd. Label_Name, up to 11 charachters (you can give it a label after it's formatted as well).

smr54 · #8 21st January 2012, 02:21 AM

A few things, especially for those not using DE's.

You can plug in the thumb drive, then doing dmesg |tail should give you the device name. You want to be very careful with that. Typing the command mkfs.vfat /dev/whatever will, as you have seen, delete whatever is on the drive.

The -n Label_name can be helpful, I seldom bother. Note that I don't use Gnome or KDE, so I don't have automounting.

A typical sequence for me, using openbox

dmesg |tail

(Ok, now we see that the thumb drive is seen as /dev/sdc)

mkfs.vfat /dev/sdc1

mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt

Just as an example.

foampile · #9 21st January 2012, 02:44 AM

thanks, dudes