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Re: [ecs] USB flash format question Ingo Pakleppa Fri, 06 May 2005 05:10:31 -0700

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They look just like SCSI hard disks under Linux. Usually, they come 
preformatted with FAT32, and that should work just fine. If you want to 
format a USB flash in Windows, simply use Explorer to format it just as 
you would format any other drive letter (My Computer, right click on the 
drive letter, select Format).

In Linux, it's also just as any other disk. The only tricky part is 
figuring out which device name goes with it. Many Linuxes nowadays 
automatically mount a USB flash drive. If that happens, the easiest way 
to find the device name is by simply typing "mount". You should see the 
USB flash somewhere in the list.

If your Linux does not automount the USB memory stick, you can figure 
out the device name by looking at /var/log/messages or whatever else the 
log file is called.

Please be aware that if you unplug and re-plug the USB drive, you are 
likely to see a different device name. That's one of the more tedious 
things.

By the way, the mount command you typed below will rarely ever work in 
Linux in the first place. You can sometimes get away with it, but 
usually you have to specify the file system type. Usually, it would be:

mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

Also remember that you may need to set up ownership of the mount point 
as appropriate. My recommendation is to set everything to 777 for fat, 
and (only if you have control over the memory stick, so as to avoid 
viruses) also allow execution of binaries and allow any user to umount 
the memory stick, and set the owner's UID to something safe:

mount -t vfat -o users,exec,umask=777,dmask=777,uid=<uid of 
nobody>,gid=<group id of nobody> /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

OK, a bit more than you asked...

Mark Gilmore wrote:
> Might anyone know how to format a USB-flash drive (under Win *or* Linux),
> such that it will be recognized by Linux (i.e. respond to a "mount 
> /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1" command) ?
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark Gilmore
> http://OmnipotenceSoftware.com
> 

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