I am a total newbie in Linux related issues.
My current distribution is Fedora 2. That's all I know but it should be quite recent.

I currently have some files that need to run on Octave from a USB Pen Drive. However, I can't access the Pen Drive because Fedora can't detect it like WinXP. (i.e as USB Mass Storage).

Can anyone help me in how to install a driver or the methods in accessing the files in the USB Pen Drive via Fedora 2?

*Thank you*

Plug it in and see what the last few lines of $dmesg output.

If its detected, make a mount point and mount it:
I.E. (should be listed as sda1 I believe)
/dev/sda1 /mnt/thumb vfat noauto,rw,umask=000,uid=<userid> 0 0

<edit>So you have something to compare with, I get this when my pen is plugged in.

Thank you. =)

---"Plug it in and see what the last few lines of $dmesg output."---

how does one go about doing this? is $dmesg a command or file or what?

you see, I also have a Lexar 128MB JumpDrive Secure and i can't mount it for the life of me...
i tried "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash" with and without the -t flag followed by vfat and auto, i created a new line for it in fstab (/dev/sda1 /mnt/flash vfat noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0) and played around with so many options that i can't begin to remember them all...

every single time, i get the same message: "/dev/sda1 is not a valid block device" can anyone tell me what i'm doing wrong here?

dmesg is a console command.

add this line to /etc/fstab

/dev/sda1 /mnt/flash auto sync,noauto,user,exec 0 0

to mount it as a user:
> mount /mnt/flash

that way you have permissions to delete stuff off of the usb drive.

michaelk, thanks for clearing up dmesg for me (looks like it'll be helpful someday maybe... :-) )

CD! you should just come up to 204 sometime and teach me and lance how to do this! (it's adam by the way) i put in the line you posted and got the same error message... we want to get this figured out cuz we're rebuilding the cluster and it would make data transfer easier... kind of ironic you would reply to my post :-) thanks

holy crap,
how crazy is that. i just started this thing a week ago. word to the gang.

anyhow, i forgot to tell you to substitute the device name that the cluster uses. sometimes it's /dev/sda, /dev/sdb1, ect. my laptop always uses sda1, but the one at work uses a different one everytime. make a directory /mnt/usb or /mnt/flash, or whatever you want to mount the pen drive to for that matter. the way i used to mount it was as root

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb

you can try different device names until you find the one that works, then use that one for fstab so you can mount it as a user.

hope that helps a little. man, what are the odds. that's sweet

later dude, ill keep an eye out for your questions, probably wont be able to help, but what the hey

sir clif

i can't get it to mount under any of the sd? names... i tried a through z and then tried again with a 1 at the end and always got that same error message.... "not a valid block device"

is it possible i need a different name entirely? like i know sg0, sg1, etc are generic SCSI and theres slram and ftla and millions of others.... hmmmmmm...........

anyway, thanks to everyone. it still doesn't work, but at least i've learned a pantload of stuff in the process... if anyone thinks of anything else, i'd really appreciate it (and thanks in advance), but for now i'm off to research the issue further.... lata y'all

Check out this page. It helped me to get my usb reader working.
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/%7Eggbaker/personal/cf-linux

thanks, david the h. this looks like a great starting point i'll hafta wait to explore it though... need to get to class lol