[root(a)Snapafun mnt]# umount removable/ umount: removable/: not mounted This is saying that you haven't actually unmounted the device. Try umount /mnt/removable
Indeed (u)mount can be finicky about mount points. Relative mount mounts like "mount removable" will only work if you are in the parent directory of the mount point. In this case /mnt. Note that mount reads the file /etc/fstab. If you have predefined mount points for devices there you can issue shortcut commands like: mount /mnt/removable mount /mnt/cdrom etc without specifying devices or partition types. These are taken from /etc/fstab. Also note that FC3 which follows (some of) the new Linux Filesystem Standard mounts removable media in the new /media directory.
{ then re-installed it } Since you are plugging the same device in, it will have the same allocation in /dev
On new 2.6 based distros this isn't guaranteed. FC3 uses udev to assign device names. My wireless card kept getting given random device names until I tweaked the udev config. You shouldn't have a problem with USB storage devices though.
# mount -t vfat /dev/...... /mnt/removable # mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/removable
Note that some devices may not be partitioned or have odd partition layouts (rare in the case of USB storage, but still possible). Check the devices partition table with: fdisk -l /dev/sda This will list all the partitions on the device.
Surely with automount running there ought to be an easier way? You said you were running Mandrake. Does an icon appear on the desktop when you plug the drive in? If so, then there is probably an 'Unmount' option in the menu when you right click on it. This would be a much wasier way to use it.
Modern distros should just mount usb storage devices automatically out of the box. Fedora Core 3 certainly does. -- Oliver Jones <oliver(a)deeper.co.nz> Deeper Design Limited