Mount a USB flash drive from a shell

Question

I am about six months new to Linux; I have installed my first arch system but not yet installed a desktop environment.  I am trying to mount a USB flash drive from the shell but I am not having much luck.  I have tried following the instructions in the archwiki, http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/USB_Storage_Devices. I am having a problem with the following command:
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbstick
I get an error message saying that the mount point does not exist.  I have in the /mnt directory the following:
cd cdrom dvd fd0 f1
(I am not sure what fd0 and fl are, if somebody could please tell me I would appreciate it.  Also I do not have a DVD-ROM on my computer is the dvd listed by default or do I have a package installed I do not need?)  I did some searching online and came across the following site, http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2007/ … -from.html. I followed the instructions to identify the correct partition name corresponding to the USB drive by running the following command:
grep SCSI /var/log/messages.log
and I get the following results:
Dec 30 22:16:17 morgan-desktop scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage divices
Dec 30 22:16:22 morgan-desktop sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
The next steps in the instructions are to mount the partition to the existing mount point (directory) by using the following command.
mkdir -p /mnt/myusb
mount -t vfat -o rw,users /dev/sda1 /mnt/myusb
This is where I am having a problem, I do not understand the results and how to proceed to the next step, please help me.
One other small question what is the best command to shut down the computer as a normal user?
Thank you
Morgan Smith

Answer 1

Ok, Lots of different advice here, let's see if I can explain it all together, and clear up a few bits...
I'll try to explain why I'm saying what I am, it doesn't matter if you don't follow it all, commands are below.
You are on the right lines here, but a few things missing.  Firstly, to mount the USB stick you are using the correct command, but the locations are a problem.  The command is "mount -t type what/to/mount where/to/mount".   You can find out more about the mount command with "mount --help" or "man mount"
You have correctly identified type as vfat - this means the pen is formated as FAT.
To find out what to mount, you can check /var/log/messages.log, the second command you posted searches trough that file and prints out lines including the phrase SCSI, and the result tells you that a usb storage device had been attached as sdb, so the correct device is /dev/sdb1.  Storage devices are named sda sdb sdc etc in the order they are attached, and the numbers refer to the partitions on the disk.
You can mount it anywhere you want, as any existing directory, but the one you tried to use /mnt/usbstick doesn't exist, so create it, using mkdir.
The commands you need therefore are:
mkdir /mnt/usbstick
mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbstick
This will work as root.  There is also, as byte said, a program called pmount (which you can get with pacman -S pmount) which works the same way for a standard user.
Finally, there are also a number of tools like HAL which can be used to automate the process.
As for shutting down, as has been said you must be root or in the power group, then you can use 'halt' 'poweroff' 'reboot' or 'shutdown'. All have slightly different effects, and poweroff is probably the easiest.
Hope this helps
Jack