[PLUG] Getting a USB device on Mac

Tony Rick tonyr42 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 15 20:38:13 UTC 2007


On Nov 15, 2007 11:05 AM, Matt McKenzie <lnxknight at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 15, 2007 9:59 AM, Tony Rick <tonyr42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >
> >
> I think we need to determine if the OP is running Linux on his Mac, or Mac
> OS X on his Mac.


Good point; I made a weak assumption.

The question is how to identify what device is assigned.  On my iBook it
looks like a flash drive is identified as having a file system and so shows
up as a disk.  I doubt that the gps
device would show up that way.  The GPSD site gpsd.berlios.de says that OS X
is OK, but the usb drivers must
be updated to the most current versions.

I don't see the command *dmesg *on my iBook (10.3.9), but the file
*/var/log/syslog
*has a one line report about the device *disk1s1 *showing up when I plug in
the flash drive.  Maybe
something similar will happen when the gps device is attached.

To see the bottom of */var/log/syslog *in OS X, after attaching
 the gps device to the USB port, open a terminal
(Go->Utilities->Terminal) and type *tail /var/log/syslog* .

- tony



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