[PLUG] Getting a USB device on Mac

Tony Rick tonyr42 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 15 17:59:34 UTC 2007


On my (really old) iMac running Ubuntu Feisty
(7.04), a flash drive shows up as /dev/sda1.  After connecting the device to
a USB
port, run the command 'dmesg' on the command line in a terminal.  If the
device
was recognized, the last several lines will report a lot of information
about it,
including what device was assigned.

Not to get too technical, in Ubuntu (Debian? in general?) the USB driver is
implemented 'on top of' the scsi (sd) driver, and so USB devices tend to
show up as
scsi devices (/dev/sda, for example).  USB Keyboard and Mouse are special
exceptions. Since the devices are assigned dynamically (under udev control?
somebody correct me if I'm wrong here), you cannot predict what the device
assignment will be ahead of time, unless you don't use more than one USB
device, or don't ever change the USB devices once attached.

- tony



More information about the PLUG mailing list