Christopher Juckins

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.