[vox-tech] USB confusion

[Alex Mandel]

On 08/19/2010 03:00 PM, David Spencer, Internet Handyman wrote:
> I had an old eMachines computer sitting at my office doing nothing so I
> decided to put it to work. I installed CentOS workstation on it this morning.
> Now I have a fun little Linux machine for my personal use.
> 
> However, I more in mind than just building a playground computer. I had
> some SATA drives that I wanted to mount in external USB 2 enclosures and
> pull off some files. I plugged the enclosure into one of the USB ports on
> the computer and no reaction. Nothing. So I started to doubt that the USB
> was working, so I stuck in a thumb drive that I had. Normally, when I
> stick my thumb drive into my Mac, there's a light that comes on and the
> drive is mounted on the desktop. But once again, nothing. No lights, no
> autosense, nada.
> 
> So how do I figure this out guys? If I do directory of /dev I see four
> usbdev stubs (or whatever they're called) so I know that something USB
> was installed. Where should I start?
> 
> 
> -- Dave Spencer, PageWeavers

Start with:
lsusb
Which will list all usb devices that are plugged in. CentOS which is
really meant as a server distro probably doesn't auto-mount usb devices.
Some might say that action would be a security risk on a server. So you
will probably have to mount it yourself. So the next step is (might need
to be run as root or sudo)
fdisk -l
Which should list drives attached.
That will give you enough information to try and mount a drive.
See:
man mount
for more info.

Enjoy,
Alex