[wplug] Continuing Memory Stick problem on ThinkPad

[Bryon Gill]

Hm, RH9 used to mount my camera ok, and it was just usb mass storage, but your 
situation sounds as if you don't have usb drivers enabled in your kernel or else 
you'd at least see something like "USB device inserted, no driver claims device" 
in /var/log/messages.  What version of the linux kernel are you running? (uname -r).

I've also seen the older USB mass storage drivers lock up - I hate to suggest it 
but sometimes the only thing you can do when the kernel gets into a messy state 
is reboot and try again.

Finally, my usb memory stick is also an mp3 player and it has a switch on it, 
when the switch is set one way it won't work as a usb mass storage device.  Is 
it possible that you have something like that?

Good luck,
Bryon

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Jennifer Landefeld wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> See message below. Any additional advice for us to try to get this stick 
> recognized. It's an X31 ThinkPad running RH9 and a standard USB memory stick. 
> I'm not in the office today so I don't have access to the machine and stick 
> in question. I'm also waiting to hear if this stick has actually functioned 
> on any other computer successfully.
>
> TIA,
> Jenn
>
>> 
>>> Re: the memstick issue, here are some suggestions from our Linux group:
>>>> 
>>>> My drive shows up as /dev/sda1 which I can then mount under
>>>> /mnt/flash. Right after you plug it in, run dmesg or check
>>>> /var/log/messages for a clue on which device name it shows up as.
>>> 
>>> ...to add to that, probably something of the
>>> mkdir -p /mnt/flash && mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/flash
>>> should do the trick.
>>> 
>>> You can also check if the flash card is readable as a device with
>>> # fdisk -l /dev/sda
>>> That usually exposes the Partition Table From Hell (4 overlapping
>>> partitions, in most USB sticks I've seen), which should be reformatted
>>> with fdisk into something sane.
>> 
>> I tried this stuff and, unfortunately, it doesn't work.  Plugging the
>> memstick into the back of the ThinkPad does not produce any result
>> according to dmesg or /var/log/messages.
>> 
>> I did manage to create /mnt/flash, but I cannot mount /dev/sda1
>> because it says that device is not a valid block device.
>> 
>> I also tried the fdisk -l /dev/sda1 command (had to use /sbin/fdisk
>> since it's not on the search path), but it didn't print anything; I
>> get the same result if I pass fdisk an invalid argument.  It does
>> print useful stuff if I point it at my hard drive instead of the
>> memstick.
>> 
>> My guess is that all of this is due to the laptop not recognizing that
>> the memstick is present.  What's the fix?
>
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