[NTLUG:Discuss] Problem to mount USB memory stick

[Bob Netherton]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 20:39 -0600, David Simmons wrote:
> 
> > Hmmm - that's interesting.  We have an MP3 player that Linux won't
> > mount.  I wonder if that's the same problem?   Of course it
> would
> > probably be a really, really bad idea to reformat an MP3
> player's
> > internal drive.

You'd be able to use it from Linux, but it wouldn't be much of an MP3
player, would it :-)    And certainly, don't do this to an iPod!!!!!!!

> > 
> > Why can't Linux
> mount FAT16?
> 
> Haven't been following this thread from the
> beginning - so this might have already been stated......sure Linux can
> mount FAT16, etc

Ummmm, to do so would require a file system driver.   Mine doesn't have
a FAT16 driver.

> ....but remember that your device needs a DRIVER...the
> reason that some mount and other don't is (probably) not due to the
> formatting - it's due to the fact that Linux can find/load a module/driver
> for it.

USB SCSI emulation generally does the trick, but you are right, the
device may be incorrectly recognized.   An incompatible file system
will also be rather problematic, which is what the original email
looked like.

I have one right here that was formatted fat16, saw that from Windows.
Reformatted it (using Windows terminology, we would say that we make a
new file system) to FAT32 and it works like a champ.   Can even mount it
on Solaris too :-)

There are other neat USB storage tricks.   I carry around a Solaris
sparse root zone in a zpool - that's really cool.


Bob