USB Flash drive does not mount [Solved]

[Ditzian]

I have a new Crucial 8GB USB flash drive (Gizmo).  My Windows XP machine sees it fine.  PClinuxOS sees it as a USB device, and formats it, but does not mount it automatically or manually.  It shows up on the "Devices recently plugged in" icon in PCLinuxOS_2010, but does not show up in a terminal when I type df -h.  I am pretty sure it is /dev/sdb1, but when I try the command mount /dev/sdb1, the terminal replies "mount: can't find /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab."  

It is visible in PCLinuxOS Control Center, both in hardware and in "Manage disk partitions."  It can be formatted from here, but I cannot mount it.  When I try mount point, its asks me for stuff I do not understand.  I chose the mount point /dev/sdb1 and it appeared to accept that, but when I clicked "mount,"
 it said "error creating directory, /dev/sdb1 is a file and I won't delete it.

How should I mount this device?  Should I use the control center but choose another name?

Jan

[Old-Polack]

I have a new Crucial 8GB USB flash drive (Gizmo).  My Windows XP machine sees it fine.  PClinuxOS sees it as a USB device, and formats it, but does not mount it automatically or manually.  It shows up on the "Devices recently plugged in" icon in PCLinuxOS_2010, but does not show up in a terminal when I type df -h.  I am pretty sure it is /dev/sdb1, but when I try the command mount /dev/sdb1, the terminal replies "mount: can't find /dev/sdb1 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab." 

It is visible in PCLinuxOS Control Center, both in hardware and in "Manage disk partitions."  It can be formatted from here, but I cannot mount it.  When I try mount point, its asks me for stuff I do not understand.  I chose the mount point /dev/sdb1 and it appeared to accept that, but when I clicked "mount,"
 it said "error creating directory, /dev/sdb1 is a file and I won't delete it.

How should I mount this device?  Should I use the control center but choose another name?

Jan

A mount point is a directory. It can be anyplace, and have any name. I have /mnt/here and /mnt/there as mount point directories. To mount to them one needs to tell mount what filesystem is used on the partition one wants mounted. A command such as this is needed;

# mount /dev/sdxn -t ext3 /mnt/here                  <Enter>

One must use a correct partition designation, the correct filesystem, and an existing mount point directory, for the command to work.

If one intends to mount the same partition to the same mount point often, or at each boot, a line in /etc/fstab with the needed information will allow this. If the option noauto is used, the partition will not be mounted at boot time, but can be mounted with the short form command you used, so long as the entry exists in /etc/fstab. With no line in fstab, the long form of the command must be used.

[Was_Just19]

Open the device notifier and to the right of the device is a small icon which when clicked on will mount the device under /media/<device label>   if it has a label or else under /media/disk, or /media/disk-1 etc

Also it should show in Dolphin file manager whether mounted or not.

[Ditzian]

Thanks to both of you.  to Old-Polack, who offered a very clear definition of what mounting actually is, and to Johnboy, who has the correct directions for mounting this flash drive.  All it took was a click. 

I have a different goal now, but I will put it in a different post.

Sorry about misspelling "mount," I will change it right after this post.

Thank you both again,

Jan