Unable to mount usb disk drive through command

user3477071

1/25/24, 2:13 PM

I am running Ubuntu Focal(20.04.5 LTS) on a laptop.

A usb drive containing ext4 fileysystem is recognizable through the lsblk command

$ lsblk
...
sda           8:0    1  14.9G  0 disk
└─sda1        8:1    1  14.9G  0 part
...

Attempt to mount it through command line fails without any error

$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
$ mount | grep /mnt
$ ls /mnt
$ sudo umount /mnt
umount: /mnt: not mounted.

To be able to successfully mount and use the usb drive, I have to launch the File Manager GUI and click on the label corresponding to the usb drive. At this point I can see the drive mounted and available to use at the path of /media/<login_name>/<drive_label>

There are times, I cannot physically get to the laptop to launch the File Manager. Need assistance on how to get the drive to mount through command line.

0 + 6

usb

mount

kanehekili

1/25/24, 2:19 PM

create `mkdir /media/myusb` and mount with `sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /media/myusb`

user3477071

1/25/24, 2:49 PM

That works. what's wrong with my previous commands.

sudodus

1/25/24, 2:58 PM

Your original command works for me and *should* work. What is the output of `ls -ld /mnt` and `ls -l /mnt`? Could there be some missing identifier in that particular ext4 file system, so that you need the option `-t` of `mount`?

user3477071

1/25/24, 3:00 PM

$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt $ ls -ld /mnt drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 9 2021 /mnt $ ls -l /mnt total 0

sudodus

1/26/24, 9:16 AM

@user3477071, Thanks for those details. The output of `ls -ld /mnt` and `ls -l /mnt` look like they should (when nothing is mounted there). So for some strange reason you cannot mount there, but you can mount on a subdirectory of `/media`.

nobody

2/22/24, 7:26 PM

`udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdxy` Sorry for my wrong last comment; my keyboard is damaged.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Unable to mount usb disk drive through command

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