[Techtalk] Re: [prog] USB keys

[Tracey Clark]

And it was said by Mary-->
> On Mon, May 10, 2004, daniel.richter at wimba.com wrote:
>> I'm going to buy a USB key (I think some people call it
>> a memory stick).

AFAIK the common name for this is a "usb drive", as it's a hard drive
that plugs into a USB port. They are sometimes also known as thumb drives
or pen drives (because they are about the size of a thumb or look like a
fat pen I assume). They are in the category of "mass storage devices".
Apparently the term "USB key" is starting to be used as well. Is that
enough terminology for one little thing? ;)

They are not the same as a memory stick, which is Compact Flash memory or
SD memory. To me the terminology is confusing because it is not memory
like RAM. It is data storage, although not a hard drive, but I digress.

The drives are supported by the usb-storage kerel module. However, usb
drives have different chips, and not all are supported fully or at all by
Linux. The way to get the support for it in your kernel may vary slightly
by distribution, but the idea is the same. RPM and deb (apt) based
distributions such as Red Hat or Debian will tend to have the support
already compiled in, you might be able to just plug in the drive and have
it just work. There is also a utility called hotplug which allows the
system to dynamically recognize the plug-in and unplugging of devices
that you will want to set up. This is probably already set up in RPM and
deb based distros.

>From my experience, the Lexar USB drives just work once you have
usb-storage support configured. In order to get it configured, I'd
suggest reading a little bit about USB and Linux. This is an excellent
resource:
http://www.linux-usb.org/
They have a guide to setting USB drive support here:
http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/book1.html

Also check out the FAQ link on the left on the main page.


The "Working devices list" linked from www.linux-usb.org has an extensive
database of all devices know to work or not work or partially work in
Linux. The list of USB drives is here:
http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdevcat.php?id=11
You can also use the "quick search" at the top to check out a specific
vendor.



-- 
Tracey
Linux Counter #264789

"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely
unintentional side effect." - Linus Torvalds, New York Times, 28 Sept 03