USB Flash Drives

[Manolis Kiagias]

fixer wrote:
> FreeBSD localhost 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 
> 11:05:30 UTC 2007     
> root at dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  i386
> localhost#
>
>
> I just discovered flash drives.  They are very easy to use on Windows.
> I don't know if FreeBSD supports these drives.  But if FreeBSD does,
> I need instructions on "how-to-use".  Thanks in advance for anyone who 
> can help.
>
> Bruce

Have a look at these:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/usb-disks.html

Generally speaking, using an ms-dos (fat/fat32) formatted flash drive is 
as simple as this:

- plug
- get device name (probably da0) with dmesg |tail
- mount as root in /mnt:  mount -t msdofs /dev/da0s1 /mnt
- Copy / move files etc
- umount /mnt
- unplug

If you read the handbook section, you will also be able to setup your 
system for user mounting, so you won't have to mount as root.
Another useful piece of info is this:

http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/halfaq.html

With these instructions you can configure automounting in GUIs like 
Gnome (and XFCE and possibly others, as long as HAL is used)
Bear in mind that no matter how you mounted the device,   you will have 
to unmount it before physically removing it, otherwise you are in for a 
nasty surprise...