Arch Linux

nirvanix

Member

From: Saskatoon

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 193

USB mass storage problem with mounting

Hi,

I've got an up to date Arch system with kernel 2.6.15. I've recently purchased a COWON Iaudio U3 mp3 device, but can't get it to mount under Arch. Every other flash card and mp3 player I have mounts fine as a a usb mass storage device with a FAT file system, but not the COWON. When I use cfdisk on it (cfdisk /dev/sdb), it tells me that it has 1Gb of free space - it doesn't recognize any filesystem. Even if I use cfdisk to create a FAT filesystem - it still won't mount. Under windows the same device mounts as a FAT filesystem ok. My fstab entries are:

/dev/sda1     /mnt/flash    vfat     user, noauto           0           0
/dev/sdb1     /mnt/flash    vfat     user, noauto           0           0

I'm kind of out of ideas at the moment. COWON even advertises that this device works with Linux. Any suggestions???

thanks.

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I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

FUBAR

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-12-08

Posts: 1,029

Website

Re: USB mass storage problem with mounting

What does "fdisk -l /dev/sdb" tell you?
I had a stick once that was troublesome in Linux but worked perfectly in Windows. Even tho I only had one FAT partition on it, "fdisk -l" showed 4! After removing them and using cdfisk to create one big partition, everything was fine.

Did you remember to mkfs.vfat after cfdisking the stick?

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A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
On my desk I have a workstation.

nirvanix

Member

From: Saskatoon

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 193

Re: USB mass storage problem with mounting

thanks fubar, i'll give those ideas a try!

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I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

mac57

Member

From: St. Somewhere

Registered: 2006-01-06

Posts: 302

Website

Re: USB mass storage problem with mounting

Two other things to try:

1) After you have plugged the stick in, do "dmesg | tail" and see if you see any messages from the kernel telling you that it has detected your device, and potentially listing availabile partitions. You may find that your storage is not on partition 1. For example, Zip drives show up on partition 4 of their device. My iPod shows up as two partitions, 1 and 2. The main storage is on 2!

2) do the following command "cat /proc/partitions". This lists all the partitions that the kernel is aware, whether they are mounted or not.

Good luck!

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Cast off the Microsoft shackles Jan 2005

nirvanix

Member

From: Saskatoon

Registered: 2005-01-31

Posts: 193

Re: USB mass storage problem with mounting

thanks mac57!

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I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...