I'm using a 32 megabyte USB memory key to store Knoppix'e configuration and home directory data. It works fine, but I have a few questions.

I had a hard time figuring out the device name for the USB key. I looked in /var/log/messages and it was always empty. I looked inthe daily message and found the following:

# dmesg | grep sda
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 64000 512-byte hdwr sectors (33 MB)
sda: sda1 sda2 sda4
#

So i made a mount point mkdir /mnt/usbkey and then mounted sda with mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/usbkey. That worked OK, I could save files to the new mount, but I couldn't select /mnt/usbkey in KNoppix's save configuration dialog.

I could select floppy, /mnt/sda1, /mnt/sda2, or /mnt/sda4 in the save configuration dialog. Apparently these got automounted somehow. Selecting /mnt/sda1 resulted in a save configuration error. Selecting /mnt/sda4 worked perfectly. It also worked fine for creating a home directory image. The config and home directory also restore correctly on boot up too.

Where did /mnt/sda1, /mnt/sda2, and /mnt/sda4 come from? Knoppix must have automounted them? Why did /mnt/sda1 not work, but /mnt/sda4 work?

What was the sda: sda1 sda2 sda4 part of the daily message telling me?

I guess the plan is to just pop a USB memory key in, let Knoppix automount it, and go from there...


-jb