After years of trying to decide if Linux is for me, I've decided to give it a trial run. I downloaded DSL and made a boot CD. I can then boot into Damn Small Linux from the CD. There is an option to install to a USB pendrive, which I want to use, however it asks for the device and I don't know which one it is. The suggestion, sda, doesn't work. What else coudl the pen drive be?

-Ryan Adams
http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

Try sda1 and sdb1. At least when I have to manually map flash drives with Redhat those one or the other of those always work.

No go for either. When I try any of those it says: "No such device or address".

-Ryan Adams
http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

When I run the lsusb command it doesnt list my drive. Does this mean that Linux is not recognizing it? Does the drive have to be preforamted to any particular file system to be recognized? Is there a easy way to install DSL to a usb drive from Windows?

-Ryan Adams
http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

I've tried this on 3 computers now with 3 different flash drives and none of them list my usb drive with lsusb. Is this a problem with DSL? Maybe I'l ltry knoppix...

-Ryan Adams
http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

lsusb should list your device, try:
$ cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
and you should see your hub there, if not you may not have USB enabled in your kernel or you may need to load a module. Knoppix should definitely detect your USB.

I'm not knocking DSL but it may not be the best distro for a beginner. Give knoppix a go and you will soon discover whether GNU/Linux is for you or not. Bear in mind that running a live cd distro is a lot slower than one installed to your hard drive but it will give you a idea of what all the fuss is about! If you have enough RAM (750Mb+) then you can load the cd into memory and run it from a ramdisk which is far faster. Just pass "toram" as a boot option when booying the CD, you kill wanty to type something like:
knoppix toram

Good luck and don't give up too quick....

Funny you should mention that. I locked there not knowing much about linux and recognized some things, but my USB drive is not one of them. It's a standard flash drive (Mass Storage Device as windows likes to call it) and it's plugged directly into the computer's USB port. I cannot for the life of me figure out why DSL, Knoppix, nor Ubuntu live detect it.

-Ryan Adams
http://members.cox.net/rtadams89/

The following command should mount the device if possible:
# mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 mnt/usbdrive

Reasons the above command may not work:

1) You are not logged on as root. Type the command "su" and give root's password. This won't work in ubuntu, instead use sudo and give YOUR password:
# sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 mnt/usbdrive

2) You haven't created the mountpoint. Chances are you haven't got /mnt/usbdrive as I made that up. You can create the mountpoint with:
# mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
or substitute /mnt/usbdrive for where you want to mount it.

3) You have a SCSI drive already in your system. The thumb drive will take the first unused SCSI device so if you already have one drive it will be /dev/sdb1 instead.

4) The drive might not be formatted to vfat (FAT32), try "-t usbfs" instead or maybe "-t auto" will work.

5) You do not have the correct USB modules loaded, what is the output of "/sbin/lsmod" after plugging in the drive? Have a look towards the end of the output of the command "dmesg" to see what is happening when intserting the device. Try pluging the drive in and out whilst running the following command:
# tail -f /var/log/messages

6) Your kernel does not support USB. I don't know about DSL but both knoppix and ubuntu most definitely support it (I have used both myself with USB devices).

7) Your drive is linux-unfriendly. I have come across two thumbdrives I could not get to work under linux. With the first one I could only mount a very small partition which contained what looked like driver files which would enable a windoze machine to view the rest of the drive. The other one just plain wouldn't work. It wasn't mine and I couldn't be bothered to find out why.

8) Another reason I can't think of right now!

What make and model is it? Have you googled for it and linux?