Can't "see" a USB stick

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[jkev]

This should be trivial, but it's stumping me.

I have DSL running in a VMWare VM, booting from a (VMWare virtual) disk.  The disk is persistent,
in VMWare-speak. The problem is that I can't get DSL to recognize a (vfat-formatted) USB stick.

Yes, I've looked in /etc/fstab.  There's no /dev/sda entry there (or any /dev/sd* entry for that matter).
I have tried "mount -t vfat /dev/sd* /mnt/xyz" for -- believe it or not -- *all* choices for that '*' there.
No dice.  (Yeah, directory "xyz" exists.)

Yes, the USB stick is formatted.  It's recognized by all of:  the Ubuntu host O/S; other VMs (Ubuntu,
Win7, WinXP); and a stand-alone WinXP install on another machine.  It ain't the stick.

I've tried booting up DSL with/without the "frugal", "noscsi", "scsi", "usb", "usb-storage" boot options.
All yield the same negative result.

What the *&@# am I overlooking?  This is beyond frustrating!  TIA to everyone.

cheers,
j. kev
Friday, 2012.10.12 @ 1522 UTC

[jkev]

Some additional info:

    - Yes, the USB is connected to the VM (in VMWare)
    - The mount error message is:
        mount:  /dev/sdx is not a valid block device
        (where 'x' is replaced by every choice.  You know what I mean here, even though I'm not stating it elegantly.)

[frank4360]

I have (nearly) exactly the same problem.

In my case I am running DSL as the only system on an old Acer - not as a virtual machine.

I have tried fat32 and ext3 formats on the USB stick - all to no avail.

Typical message from mount command " mount -v /dev/sda /mnt/sda" (I left out the filesystem type so mount checks all types in /etc/filesystems) is :-

"mount: relocation error: mount: undefined symbol: blkid_known_fstype"

The usb stick is readable on several other Linux systems so the stick is fine.

Any suggestions welcome!

RESOLUTION -

There was a problem with a 2GB usb stick that I was using. It was pre-formatted when bought to have two partitions; the first of about 1mb, the second with the rest of the 2GB. This stick cannot be seen by DSL.

Other usb sticks are fine - though the device name of the usb stick can be variable!

I put the stick in a usb port and use "dmesg" from a shell to see what device it is seen as (usually /dev/sdc1).

I have created an empty partition on the DSL computer as "/usbstick".

I then simply mount the usb device to the partition with the command "sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /usbstick"

After using the usb stick it needs to be unmounted with command "sudo umount /dev/sdc1" - usually the system says that the device is busy and can't be unmounted - I ignore this and remove the stick anyway.

I can see the usb stick now.

[jkev]

It's nice to hear that it's not just me.

However, I don't see how this "resolution" works (at least for me (of course)).
When I attach the stick to the DSL VM (via the VMWare "VM -> Removable Devices -> Corsair Voyager [in my case] -> Connect",
VMWare is happy:  it feels that the device is in fact connected to the guest O/S (DSL).  The host O/S [Ubuntu, in my case] also
sees the stick "disappear," so all seems okay...

... but DSL does *NOT* see the device.  fdisk shows only the VM's hard disk (which as we all know is really a file on the host O/S.
but that's irrelevant).  parted doesn't seem to exist in DSL, so I can't run it on the guest O/S  If I try running "fdisk /dev/sdc1", it sez
it's unable to open /dev/sdc1.  If I run "fdisk -l /dev/sdc1", I get no output at all.

It might have to do with DSL kernel boot params, but I've tried a number of combinations there as well:  with and without "scsi",
with and without "usb", etc.

And when the stick is connected to the host O/S. I do see that 1 MB pseudo-partition at the front of the stick.  I am somewhat
reluctant to remove it and roll it into the partition forming the rest of the disk, for fear that there's something lurking there that
enables reading the whole stick.

Since the ultimate goal was just to create a SMALL Linux VM that could run a DNS server for my little virtual stand-alone network,
I'm now thinking I should bit the bullet and just move to a standard-sized Linux VM for the purpose.  This seems to be my
typical "penny-wise and pound foolish" behavior:  I've wasted too much time trying to make DSL do something it may just
not be able to do.  Sigh...

[fatmac]

Maybe you have to tell your VM that the other partition is there.

I only use qemu; that requires that I tell it which 'disk' to boot from & tell it any other that I want to be available to that 'disk'.

[Laptop98]

"mount: relocation error: mount: undefined symbol: blkid_known_fstype"

The usb stick is readable on several other Linux systems so the stick is fine.

RESOLUTION -

There was a problem with a 2GB usb stick that I was using. It was pre-formatted when bought to have two partitions; the first of about 1mb, the second with the rest of the 2GB. This stick cannot be seen by DSL.

Other usb sticks are fine - though the device name of the usb stick can be variable!

I put the stick in a usb port and use "dmesg" from a shell to see what device it is seen as (usually /dev/sdc1).

I have created an empty partition on the DSL computer as "/usbstick".

I then simply mount the usb device to the partition with the command "sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /usbstick"

I can see the usb stick now.

I have the same problem with a USB stick. I think the stick uses UDRW technology, so it appears as a 2 seperate drives in windows. In DSL it appears as sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4.

You said you solved the problem by creating an "empty partition".  I don't know much about Linux, how do I create an empty  partition?

What do I have to type in to create an empty partition?

[Laptop98]

Still can't get it to see my USB flash drive. The flash drive uses a Phison PS2231 USB controller and is set to the mode of "secure + public partition" - meaning it appears as 2 seperate drives in Windows (secure password protected drive + unsecured public drive). DSL can't handle it but everything other OS / device I've ever tried it with can.