Mount USB in ESX 4

[MizComputing]

The command to mount a usb drive on an ESX host is this

mount /dev/*** mnt/usb -t vfat

All the postings tell you this...

However what no postings tell you is how to work out ***

Can someone please tell me how I work out ***....when I insert the usb key how can I work out the device name....I've spent two hours and no joy.

I've tried sdc1, sdc, sda, sda1.....guessing. I try removing the key and then insert it...seeing what changes in the dev folder but nothing chages.

The key I've inserted was formated in Windows to fat32....

Many thanks

[DSTAVERT]

try fdisk -l (lowercase L)

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[idle-jam]

If you plan to use it for a virtual machine and you're on vsphere 4.1 try the below:

http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/articles-tutorials/general-virtualization-articles/using-usb-devices-vmware-vsphere-41.html

iDLE-jAM | VCP 2, VCP 3 & VCP 4

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[MizComputing]

Hi to both of you and many thanks for your quick answers.

Now I do not want to seem ungrateful...but wow! mounting a USB drive in ESX is quite difficult.

I want to copy some large ISO files from my USB drive to a datastore on the ESX servers....yes I know about WINSCP but I want to do it this way....its a very long story involving a very slow wireless connection from my laptop to the ESX boxes.

Is it a very difficult thing to do?..mount a USB drive on a server...

Thanks again

[idle-jam]

it's designed for security reason that USB is not being plugged in easily. anyway to upload to datastore you could open a vsphere client, select the datastore right click browse and upload from there. much more easier. Also much more faster than fastscp.

iDLE-jAM | VCP 2, VCP 3 & VCP 4

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[MizComputing]

Cheers fella,

You are very kind getting back to me.

I am still stuck with this very slow wireless link between the source of the ISO's and the ESX hosts. (no matter which way I copy)...but if I could get this USB working, ah man....I'd be a happy chap.

So I'll go back to the original question...is there an easy way to see what I should mount? dev/sda or dev/sde1 or whatever !?

Thanks again.

[DSTAVERT]

There is a way to mount the USB disk but it probably isn't what you want and probably not as safe as you might want. I would look at alternatives including a network cable between host and workstation.

If you need to do this here goes.

Insert the USB disk. Boot with the ESX install CD. Choose the TEXT mode install. Go through the process of installing up to the point where it asks you to load system drivers. Stop at the point where it asks you to enter a license number. Press ALT+F2 and press Enter to get a command prompt. Your USB device will probably be /dev/sda1 but to make sure try fdisk /dev/sda At the fdisk prompt press p and you should see the description of your usb drive.

Create a new directory to mount the drive with mkdir /usb Mount your USB disk with mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /usb Use ls /usb to view the contents of your flash disk. You should be able to copy using the cp command from /usb to /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name

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