[wplug] Continuing Memory Stick problem on ThinkPad

[DeepBlueGeek]

I had some issues with a Sandisk USB Pendrive and RH 9 that turned out to
be some modules not being loaded normally.  It has been a year since I
worked on this but I have a link to a forum thread that helped me work it
out.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90977&highlight=modprobe+usb+sandisk

> 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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