Home server not mounting external disks

Question

When I plug in a flash drive or hard drive to my local server (running debian squeeze) the machine doesn't seem to be mounting the devices in /media/usb*. Is there an step that I am missing? I trued running:

sudo fdisk -l

and the out put is as follows:

Disk /dev/mtdblock0: 1 MB, 1048576 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mtdblock0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mtdblock1: 4 MB, 4194304 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x002e5490

Disk /dev/mtdblock1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mtdblock2: 531 MB, 531628032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 64 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mtdblock2 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/sda: 3965 MB, 3965190144 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 482 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x94fd41a3

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         474     3807373+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8d399bc0

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1       60800   488375968+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Any help is much appreciated

Answer 1

Do you have a GUI installed? I'm thinking the automatic mounting in desktop versions is being done by the file browser, so it may not be available on your server. You might have to implement your own auto-mounting solution. If it's always the same flash drive you can use mtab/fstab. I quickly googled a more automatic way and this came up: http://www.monperrus.net/martin/automounting+usb+flash+drives+on+linux+with+udev+and+pmount