How to mount several USB devices (camera + handy-drive)?
Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
How to mount several USB devices (camera + handy-drive)?
Hi,
First of all, I don't know if you have a word for someone who know less about Linux than a "newbie". I'm not a computing person and I have been using Linux for less than a month, so my apologies if what I ask is rather stupid or I am not giving the correct information.
I'm using Mandrake 9.0 and I'm trying to configure both a usb "handy-drive" and a digital camera (Nikon Coolpix 2100). I have managed to configure both, separately. I mean, the handy-drive has been working fine all the time. It was automatically recognized by Mandrake from the beginning.
Then, to set up the digital camera I followed the advice I found in some forum and added
/dev/sda1 /mnt/nikon vfat user,sync 0 0
to fstab. The camera worked great. But then the handy-drive was no longer there. I then added to fstab
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbhd auto user 0 0
and when I mounted the camera I was accessing the handy drive files from the camera directory and viceversa. But at some reboot Mandrake added a /mnt/removable and most of the times I could only access the handy drive from any of the mount points.
I've read some documentation and help files around, but I'm not a technical person and don't seem to understand very well what the problem is (apart from me fiddling with stuff I don't know). I've seen some configurations with, say, /dev/sda, /dev/sdb... or /dev/sda1, /dev/sda..., etc. But in my /dev directory I can only see sda and sda1 files. I don't know (this is were you can see I'm pretty ignorant) whether I need to use a different /dev file for each device or not. And if this is the case, which one, or whether I need to add one. Or whether the problem is some other thing altogether.
I have the suspicion that my problem is a rather stupid one, because both devices work perfectly... I guess I just messed up with the usb ports and the computer cannot find the proper device.
By the way. I have four usb ports in my computer. Do I need to connect each device to the same port always? I've always done that, but I don't really know why.
I hope I'm not taking too much of your time with this stuff! Thanks
In my /dev directory I just have a file named "sda" and one named "sda1" (which sometimes appears as "sda0" [?]). Can I just create /dev/sda2 myself, or is it something that should be automatic?
If I mount /mnt/nikon with KDiskFree I access in that directory the contents of my handy-drive (that is, the other USB device) from Konkeror. If I then mount /mnt/removable (which has been automatically added on boot) it gives the following error,
Called: mount /dev/sda1
mount: /dev/sda1 already mounted or /mnt/nikon busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda1 is already mounted on /mnt/nikon
If then I unmount /mnt/nikon and mount /mnt/removable in turn, the /mnt/removable directory appears empty, but /mnt/nikon shows again the handy-drive files. That is, in both cases I can only access to the handy-drive.
I don't know if it is of any use, but my mntab file is,
If then I unmount /mnt/nikon and mount /mnt/removable in turn, the /mnt/removable directory appears empty, but /mnt/nikon shows again the handy-drive files. That is, in both cases I can only access to the handy-drive.
That is certainly rather odd. I'm not sure what could be going on there.
Quote:
In my /dev directory I just have a file named "sda" and one named "sda1" (which sometimes appears as "sda0" [?]). Can I just create /dev/sda2 myself, or is it something that should be automatic?
Are you certain that you've seen sda0? That's not a node I've ever come across. At this point my unfamiliarity with Mandrake become a problem: I'm not sure how it handles device nodes. Is the output of "ls /dev/sd*" really just "/dev/sda /dev/sda1"? If there really are just those couple of nodes then I can't see how they'd exist without Mandy creating them automatically on detecting the device. But I don't know.
You may find it instructive to observe the changing output of dmesg, as you insert one of the devices in question, to see if the usb mass storage driver gives any instructive information about which SCSI device it's emulating.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.