music on xmms off a usb key

garyozzy · 07-27-2005, 09:29 AM

i'm running DSL off a 128MB USB key, but I can't figure out how to play music from (a)my hard drive (if possible) and (b) my usb disk

got any ideas?

cdhgee · 07-27-2005, 09:40 AM

Can you see your hard drive(s) in /dev? What does the following command yield?

Code:

ls /dev/hd*

To play music, get xmms - it's like winamp and it's tiny so should fit on your usb drive with no problem. You should be able to just browse and pick a directory from within xmms - your USB drive will probaly be /dev/sdx.

garyozzy · 07-27-2005, 03:21 PM

i already have xmms and

Code:

ls /dev/hd*

yields five columns of /dev/hdxy

where x is a letter a-h
and y is a number 1-20 except on /dev/hdh, it only goes through 9

all of these are in the color purple, except for a few in turqouise, which are each letter's 17-20

cdhgee · 07-28-2005, 03:00 AM

Does the output from ls -l /dev/hd* match the partitions on your hard disk? It should do.

If you type

Code:

mount

it will show you which of your hard drives are mounted...are any of them mounted? If not you need to mount them in an appropriate folder, e.g.

Code:

mount /dev/hda12 /mnt/harddrive

garyozzy · 07-28-2005, 07:12 AM

the command mount turns up:

Code:

/dev/root on / type ex2 (rw)
/dev/hda on /KNOPPIX type iso9660 (ro)
/ramdisk on /ramdisk type tmpfs (rw, size=96964k)

waht does this mean and what do i do next?

cdhgee · 07-28-2005, 07:21 AM

What this means is

Code:

/dev/root on / type ex2 (rw)

This is the root filesystem. This is probably your USB key.

Code:

/dev/hda on /KNOPPIX type iso9660 (ro)

This looks like a LiveCD or something.

Code:

/ramdisk on /ramdisk type tmpfs (rw, size=96964k)

This appears as a disk drive but actually uses your computer's RAM as storage, so it's not persisted after you shut down.

What this all means is that your actual hard drives don't appear. I would expect them to be /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2.... and so on for as many partitions as you have.

try

Code:

mkdir /tmp/hd
mount /dev/hdb1 /tmp/hd

If you can then see any files and folders in /tmp/hd, you've got one of your hard drive's partitions. Repeat - a bit of trial and error to get the right combination, adjusting the 'b' and the '1' with letters c, d and numbers as appropriate. In general, hda and hdb will be your primary IDE channel and hdc and hdd will be your secondary channel. This kind of tallies with what you've got above - it looks like the CD is on the primary IDE channel. If you've only got one hard disk, I'd start with hdc1.

garyozzy · 07-28-2005, 09:09 AM

i'm trying to mount /dev/hdc1, but it isn't working. it said i needed to be root, so i used the command "su" (without quotes) and it asked for a password. i never set up a root password with DSL. so what do i do?

cdhgee · 07-28-2005, 09:18 AM

Hmm. Not entirely sure. Is there a default password for DSL?

garyozzy · 07-28-2005, 10:57 AM

not that i know of, couldn't find one on the DSL website

garyozzy · 07-28-2005, 07:47 PM

ok - using the sudo su command, i got to be root without a password

and when i use the command

Code:

mount /dev/hdc1 /tmp/hd

it tells me
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

cdhgee · 07-29-2005, 03:10 AM

OK it looks like you'll have to specify the filesystem type manually. Try first

Code:

mount -t auto /dev/hdc1 /tmp/hd

If that doesn't work, try

Code:

mount -t ext3 /dev/hdc1 /tmp/hd

I'm assuming here that your hard drive is formatted in ext3 - if not, adjust the -t parameter as appropriate.

garyozzy · 07-29-2005, 06:57 AM

ok - i tried the first one and it said

Code:

/dev/hdc1: Input/output error
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

so i tried the second one:

Code:

root@ttyp9[dsl]#mount -t ntfs /dev/hdc1 /tmp/hd
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc1
or too many mounted file systems
(coud this be the IDE device where you in fact use
 ide-scsi so that sr0 or sda or so is neede?)

cdhgee · 07-29-2005, 07:00 AM

OK....is the partition formatted in FAT by any chance? If so try -t vfat as the fileysystem type option.

You might try using fdisk to check that you are trying to access the right disk:

Code:

fdisk /dev/hdc

Then hit p to list the partitions available.

If there aren't any, try the same thing on /dev/hdd

garyozzy · 07-29-2005, 07:36 AM

it's NTFS
i used

Code:

fdisk /dev/hdc

and it said it was unable to read the disk

and for the rest (hdd-hdz), it says it is unable to open

cdhgee · 07-29-2005, 08:17 AM

Try /dev/hdb?