Mounting USB external drives in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

We came across this interesting problem with Hardy Heron the other day, we wanted to insert a USB flash drive into a computer running the latest Linux distro and access it's contents. It obviously tried to mount the device into the file system but something was stopping it.

Introduction.

After a recent crash that caused some loss of data (not Linux), I decided to look at the possibility of an external USB back-up drive, in order to back up on a more regular basis; I lost about a weeks worth of data plus some email records. The thinking behind it was to have a drive that would back-up from both Windows® and Linux machines and therefore, the file system had to be recognised by both systems.

Linux on Compact Flash Card

For some reason we at SoSLUG seemed to have great difficulty finding information that would enable us to install a Linux system to a Compact Flash Card.

Identified Problems and Observations

# Locate obtain or build an Operating System for use on Compact Flash. # Install (somehow) to Compact Flash the Linux Operating System obtained. # Not all CF Cards are the same or to be more precise what will work on one set of equipment will not necessarily work on another set. We used both a 512Mb and 128Mb Compact Flash Cards.