30 April 2005

            Problem while mounting USB flash drive in FC3:

                 Yesterday,  I  was trying to mount a USB flash drive in
            my machine running FC3 with  the  Linux  kernel-2.6.11.7.  I
            could  not  mount that device, as "mount" terminated leaving
            an error message: "/dev/sda1: does not exist", for me. So, I
            created  a  device  file  named "sda1" under "/dev" diretory
            using "MAKEDEV"  command,  and  again  tried  to  mount  the
            device, This time "mount" exited after prompting me that the
            device "sda1" (which I just created) is not  a  valid  block
            device.  "What  the hell !...", said I, and again started to
            figure  out  the  problem.  I  wrote  couple  of  mails   to
            comp.os.linux.misc at Google-groups, and to linux-bangalore-
            technical mailing list. I also googled the error messege  as
            it  is,  opened some of the early links, and started to read
            in the hope to find the solution. And yes!, I found my solu-
            tion on the following page

            http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/10/msg05425.html

            Solution:

                 Complie  the  linux kernel to add couple of modules and
            support to SCSI and USB devices in it. Go to directory  con-
            taining kernel source and do the following steps

                 .    make menuconfig

                 .    Go  to  "Main  Menu  -->  Device  Drivers --> SCSI
                      device support" and Select SCSI disk support

                 .    Go to "Main Menu --> USB support" and Enable  EHCI
                      HCD  (USB  2.0)  support, Enable OHCI HCD support,
                      also UHCI HCD (Most Intel and VIA) support

            You are done! compile your kernel by following  steps  after
            this

                 .    make bzImage

                 .    make modules

                 .    Do the root login and

                 .    make modules_install

                 .    make install

                 That's  it!, reboot your machine, insert the USB drive,
            it'd be automatically detected by  system  and  also  system
            will create "sda1" device for you!, jsut mount the drive and


            Njoy !!!



                                                              ...PJP