Damn Small Linux - Not!

mkaylor · Joined: 30 Aug 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Garland, TX.

I can mount my USB thumb drive no problem when booting from CD.

When I boot from my 3Gig IDE Compaq Flash it will not allow me to mount the USB drive. It says /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device. I also can't mount my USB cdrom drive.

I running a little VIA C3 motherboard made by EBOX with 3 Gigs of compaq flash and 258Megs of Ram.

I'm just using the standard mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /usb command.

There must be some driver that loads when it boots from CD that doesn't get loaded when running from a hard drive?????

Thanks,
Mike

Are2 · Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Central Florida

I have the same problem and have tried all the other suggested idea's with no luck.

I have a 2Gb plug-in IDE flash drive on a VIA C7 Mini-ITX mobo and did all the right/frugal installtion. It works, but no still USB support like booting the live CD.

Have no clue to why the frugal-install, then booting off a "hard drive" does not function the same as a CD boot. It *does* appear to be a driver issue or something along that line. The modprobe does not appear to work, etc.

I still like the distro, but if I can't copy files from my USB pen drive... Well you can sort of, if you boot from the CD with the USB pen drive installed (it will auto-mount) and then copy your files over to whatever mount point your "hard drive" drive is in... then remove the CD and re-boot with the "hard drive" and your files will be there.

Real PIA, but again this is a great little distro and I look forward to using it (maybe). Hope someone will chime in and give us a heads up.

Just remember, this distro is still beta and the installer never said it would be perfect!

Chip

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roberts · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 320 Location: OC CA USA

Frugally installed mounting USB works fine for me. Both 2.0 and 1.1 devices.

Unless, the posts contain more information, like which RC are you using?
What speed USB are you having an issue with?

If I cannot reproduce it, I cannot fix it!

There was an issue with USB 2.0 not loading which was fixed in RC4.
But I would expect those testing to keep up to the latest RC version.

Are2 · Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Central Florida

Robert,

I just checked and I *thought* I was using RC4, but it is RC3. I'll DL RC4 and let you know how that works. Sorry, thought I had the latest. I'm fairly new and just now back into (U)Linux in the last few months (I ran/programmed under SCO Unix back in the 80's for flight simulation).

BTW: Also in RC3, you get auto mounting of floppy, CD and USB drive (if it's' installed prior to boot) when you boot from CD, but not with the HD install. I opened fstab, and yep they are detected on HD boot, but not available with the desktop mount tool. You have to go into the console and manually mount them...

FYI: My mobo is the Mini ITX Phylon VIA 1.5Ghz C7 processor, CN700 north, VT8237A south, 1 Gb ram, USB 2.0, Card and CF reader (Logic Supply.com). "Hard Drive" is a Transend 2Gb IDE module. Standard floppy and CD drive for now, then none, as this board is going being used to drive my robot project (R2-D2) and will be more of an imbedded type install once all the software/hardware is tested.

Thanks for the reply, I'll try RC4 and let you know how that works. Keep up the good work on this, nice little distro (and Debian too Smile

.

Chip

Are2 · Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Posts: 3 Location: Central Florida

Robert,

I installed RC4 frugal to the 2Gb IDE flash drive, and found the following:

Desktop mount button now shows sda1. When you click on it you get the:
"mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device" pop-up.

You still cannot mount sda1 unless you goto the shell and type:

[code:1] sudo modprobe usb_storage [/code:1]

Exit the shell, press the sda1 mount button and your good to go Smile

Kind of a quirk, but I can live with it for now.

Regards,

Chip

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