burninbush Posted August 22, 2021 Share Posted August 22, 2021 Here's a dumb problem ... how can I get a linux distro to recognize a usb drive? I tried this with several flash drives that I know all work (in win10), but no amount of plugging them in will wake up any of my linux distros. I have 2 recent Mint distros installed, and Neon - Robolinux - Devian Buster - Sparky - MX. They all just ignore usb flash drives. It's obviously possible, I can select at cold boot which drive to boot from; bios at least knows they are there. Any help appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 22, 2021 Share Posted August 22, 2021 Well it may recognize them but not automount if they are formatted with ntfs and you do not have ntfs-3g installed. Check with sudo dmesg Run that right after plugging one in. Linux can read fat32 out of the box but not ntfs unless you install the module. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted August 23, 2021 Author Share Posted August 23, 2021 Woof ... pages and pages of output. What am I looking for? I don't see anything that says error. Only drive I have that is ntfs (??) is a windows 10 iso flle. All the rest are vfat. I'm not certain that the problem isn't the mobo itself. For example, it has several usb2 ports that are completely useless =after= i load in the usb3 driver (that worked before). That gives it 4 usb3 ports. This is a gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P board. It appears to be up to date. I works as expected in win10 -- why I asked about using linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 You're looking for something like this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bookmem Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 8 hours ago, burninbush said: Here's a dumb problem ... how can I get a linux distro to recognize a usb drive? I tried this with several flash drives that I know all work (in win10), but no amount of plugging them in will wake up any of my linux distros. I have 2 recent Mint distros installed, and Neon - Robolinux - Devian Buster - Sparky - MX. They all just ignore usb flash drives. It's obviously possible, I can select at cold boot which drive to boot from; bios at least knows they are there. Any help appreciated. Are they seen by gparted? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wa4chq Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 (edited) What do you mean by recognize them? Have you tried just mounting them? Edited August 23, 2021 by wa4chq Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 Umm... wouldn't $ lsusb be a bit easier than dmesg? vtel57@ericsbane07~:$ lsusb Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 007 Device 003: ID 046d:c338 Logitech, Inc. Bus 007 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0181 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:6254 Alcor Micro Corp. USB Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 Or lsblk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 4 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said: Umm... wouldn't $ lsusb be a bit easier than dmesg? vtel57@ericsbane07~:$ lsusb Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 007 Device 003: ID 046d:c338 Logitech, Inc. Bus 007 Device 002: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0181 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bus 001 Device 002: ID 058f:6254 Alcor Micro Corp. USB Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub I mentioned dmesg as lsusb won't tell you what partition it identifies as. BLKID would work if the system recognized the format. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 On 8/22/2021 at 1:36 PM, burninbush said: I have 2 recent Mint distros installed, and Neon - Robolinux - Devian Buster - Sparky - MX. Flash drives should work fine with any of those distros. And it sounds like you can boot from a flash drive. I can, for example, boot MX Linux from a flash drive, and from the live session, insert amother flash drive and save stuff to that. Hey, the flash drives work fine in Windows on the same machine?? I use lots of flash drives here. I mainly use the lsblk command for info (device name, whether it's mounted, its mount point), and GParted for partitioning. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 23, 2021 Share Posted August 23, 2021 Well if they worked on windows, that made me think that the distro didnt have the ntfs-3g driver installed. That is how it will act if it doesnt know the format. Now it would still show up in gparted but the system couldn't recognize NTFS without that kernel module. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted August 24, 2021 Author Share Posted August 24, 2021 There has been a change; I tried every distro I had on hand, and was surprised to see that Slacko64 worked perfectly with all types of flash format. I'm pretty sure this is a Puppy-Ubuntu variant. Some one above mentioned gparted, same result as every other method, does not see a flash drive when installed. Blkid also produces zero results, also fdisk -l. Lsusb and lsblk also don't detect flash drives. Maybe some effort with Slacko64 might solve the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 24, 2021 Share Posted August 24, 2021 I would format them again in Slackware just to see if it is a partitioning issue or somethings. It is very odd though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted August 25, 2021 Author Share Posted August 25, 2021 Uhmmm ... don't mean to argue with you, but don't you need to detect them first in order to format them? Again, in Puppy and Win10 they don't need formatting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 25, 2021 Share Posted August 25, 2021 2 hours ago, burninbush said: Uhmmm ... don't mean to argue with you, but don't you need to detect them first in order to format them? Again, in Puppy and Win10 they don't need formatting. Well you said that they were recognized on Slack64, so I figured you could format them using gparted on Slackware. Then see if the other distros see them now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted August 25, 2021 Share Posted August 25, 2021 I know Slackware's a great distro and all, but why the heck would the flash drives show up in Slackware but not in any other distro?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 25, 2021 Share Posted August 25, 2021 A driver(module) could be the only explanation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 10 hours ago, saturnian said: I know Slackware's a great distro and all, but why the heck would the flash drives show up in Slackware but not in any other distro?? Gremlins !!! I have had instances where I have formatted and partitioned a drive in Arch or MX and then it has not been seen at all on the same Arch or MX. Only way I could get around the problem was to format in another os or in windows. It is gremlins I tell you. There are many strange and unexplained occurrences happening all the time here and now , not just in the twilight zone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted August 26, 2021 Author Share Posted August 26, 2021 So ... some progress. To correct an earlier error, I was referring to slacko64 as 'puppy-ubuntu' -- but it turns out that it was built with slack 14.2 source. They look the same to me. So I went looking through my iso files, looking for Slack stuff; found one named slack-live cd also built on slack 14.2 (32-bit). Booted it up, and it recognizes flash drives with any sort of format. Securitybreach suggested format with slack; I did a mkfs.dos -F 32 and again it boots on a slack disk. No change, and it still is unrecognized by my current linux installs. I don't understand what Puppy is doing these days; I have 5 cd's on hand, one is built with Arch parts (finds flashdrives), but 3 others don't. I was just lucky finding one that worked. I'm considering removing the usb3 motherboard driver software ... hoping that win10 and maybe linux has stuff built-in that will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 This is very odd indeed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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