-- Ross Macintyre raz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Steven W. Orr said: > On Thursday, Nov 27th 2003 at 23:23 -0000, quoth Andy Wallace: > > =>On Thu, 2003-11-27 at 16:13, Ross Macintyre wrote: > =>> Hi, > =>> I hope someone can help. > =>> I run a lab of RedHat Linux machines and want to be able to let the > =>> students mount their USB pen drives. > =>> I got a 512 MB drive, and this worked fine: > =>> an entry was made in /etc/fstab, and I mounted it (as the user that > was > =>> logged in), using 'mount /mnt/diskonkey'. > =>> mount shows this: > =>> /dev/sdb1 on /mnt/diskonkey type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev) > =>> I gor another USB pen drive (128MB), but when I insert this, no entry > is > =>> made in /etc/fstab. I am, however, able to mount it as root, by giving > the > =>> command 'mount -t vfat /dev/sda1(or /dev/sdb1 I can't remember) /mnta' > =>> > => > =>My experiences may be of use to you - I'm responsible for tech support > =>for a large number of testers who all have USB pen drives, and who all > =>may at some time put them into any one of four dozen PCs running the > =>application they're testing... > => > =>My experience has been that the first pen drive inserted (after boot) is > =>assigned /dev/sda, the 2nd, /dev/sdb etc etc, and although > =>/proc/bus/usb/devices keeps tabs on what's attached, /proc/scsi/* > =>remembers all previous. However, it has a property "Attached" or > =>"Unattached" which I use in a script to parse through > =>/proc/scsi/usb-storage-n/n (n=0-255), stopping at the first "Attached", > =>then translating that into (0=a, 1=b) etc. to detect which device to > =>mount. > => > =>This is using SuSE 8.2, which makes an auto entry in fstab of > =>/mnt/<randomlookingstring>, but my script mounts it elsewhere - you > =>don't have to use fstab. > => > =>If you want the code snippet that does this, let me know - I don't have > =>it in front of me now or I'd attach it. > > I'd just like to add one more thing: Read this month's Linux Journal. > There's a whole article there on how it works and it goes into a fair > amount of detail. Just one thing before you actually get to the article > though. When you actually mount don't forget to use -o noatime, otherwise > everytime you say ls it will write on the filesystem. And the drive does > have a limited number of writes available. > thanks to both of you for replying. Andy I would like to look at your scripts cos it will give me an insight into what is happening. Steven, I never know about the Linux Jounal, but thanks, I am going to subscribe now. I really would like to know why one PEN drive has an entry put into /etc/fstab and yet the other one doesn't, cos both are recognised by the system. I was wondering if it might have something to do with the entries in /etc/hotplug? I particularly want /etc/fstab updated; that way I can instruct students to just run one command when they are logged in on a machine. Also the entry in /etc/fstab(I am running Redhat 8.0) should have the permissions set correctly so that only *that* user can mount and umount the device. Looking at /var/log/messages the only thing I can see is that the one that worked had this entry: Nov 28 kernel: Vendor: M-Sys Model: DiskOnKey Re v: 3.04 and the one that didn't work, had this: Nov 28 kernel: Vendor: Model: USB DISK 2.0 Re v: 1.16 Now the entry in /etc/fstab is /mnt/diskonkey, so I was wondering if it was something stupid like it failed to create the dir /mnt/USB DISK 2.0 because of the spaces. I wouldn't be surprised. Ross --- -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
