Mount a USB drive that was not auto-detected.

This document (7000951) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED or Server (SLES) or openSUSE.

Booted up to hard drive or installation media.

Situation

You insert a USB drive but it is not auto-mounted for some reason. Sometimes this is needed when booted up to the installation media so log files may be copied to a Flash drive.

Resolution

1. The "usb_storage" kernel module must be loaded. To verify run "lsmod | grep usb". The output should show usb_storage as one of the loaded modules. If not, it must be loaded. Use the following command (as root):

modprobe usb-storage

2. The USB drive must be formatted with a FAT, VFAT, EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS, or XFS file system. Other filesystems, in particular NTFS, are not suitable. VFAT (or FAT32) is most common so it can be used on both Linux and Windows systems.

3. Plug the USB drive into the computer

4. Determine what device it is by running "dmesg". Here's an example:

      USB Mass Storage support registered.
      scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access CRUCIAL USB Flash Disk 2.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
      ready
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 1017856 512-byte hardware sectors (521 MB)
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] 1017856 512-byte hardware sectors (521 MB)
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through
      sdd: sdd1 <-- THIS IS THE DEVICE NAME
      sd 6:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk
      sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
      usb-storage: device scan complete

      Look for the kernel device name, in this case, /dev/sdd, with a partition on /dev/sdd1

5. Mount the volume:

mount /dev/sdd1 /mnt

Disclaimer

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