[[http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-to-mount-usb-flash-drive-from.html]] Mounting a USB flash drive in GNOME (or another Linux desktop environment) is as easy as plug and play. Yet, occasionally, you need to mount one on a server which does not run X, then you must know how to do it on the command line. Become root. $ sudo -s Plug in USB drive to a USB port. Identify the correct partition name corresponding to the USB drive. For my Debian system, it is sda, and partition 1. $ dmesg |grep -i 'SCSI device' ... SCSI device sda: 3903488 512-byte hdwr sectors (1999 MB) Alternatively, $ grep SCSI /var/log/messages ... Dec 1 11:52:26 tiger kernel: SCSI device sda: 3903488 512-byte hdwr sectors (1999 MB) Mount the partition to an existing mount point (directory). $ mkdir -p /mnt/myusb $ mount -t vfat -o rw,users /dev/sda1 /mnt/myusb users give non-root users the ability to unmount the drive. You can verify the drive is indeed mounted as follows: $ mount You should see a line in the output that looks like: /dev/sda1 on /mnt/myusb type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev) To retrieve the USB drive: You must unmount the partition before physically unplugging the USB device. $ umount /mnt/myusb You can run the mount command again (with no argument) to verify that the volume is indeed mounted. Unplug USB drive.