On 04/18/2014 05:32 AM, Robert Nichols wrote: > On 04/17/2014 12:26 PM, Robert Nichols wrote: >> On 04/16/2014 11:05 PM, Rob Kampen wrote: >>> when I tried dd if=/dev/sdf of=somefile count=100 i get: >>> >>> somefile: x86 boot sector, Microsoft Windows XP MBR, Serial 0xc3072e18; >>> partition 1: ID=0x7, starthead 0, startsector 8064, 15626368 sectors, code >>> offset 0xc0 >>> >>> still not much wiser I'm afraid. My understanding of the MBR is rough, certainly >>> insufficient to debug this. the frustration is that windoze is quite happy to >>> mount and read it just fine. >> It appears that someone took an _image_ of a full 8GB partitioned device >> with a standard DOS MBR and stuffed that into _one_partition_ of this USB >> stick. You should be able to access it in Linux by running (as root): >> >> kpartx -a -v /dev/sdf1 >> >> That should respond with "add map sdf1p1 ...", and you can then mount >> device /dev/mapper/sdf1p1. >> >> You should run "kpartx -d /dev/sdf1" to delete that mapping before >> removing the device. >> >> BTW, the "file" command will look inside block devices if you use the >> "-s" (--special-files) flag. It doesn't do that by default because >> reading some types of special files can have unexpected effects. You >> can also use the "-k" (--keep-going) flag to get more information than >> the first match. >> >> file -s -k /dev/sdf1 > OUCH!! Forget most of that. I misread your "dd" command as reading from > /dev/sdf1 instead of /dev/sdf, since the former was what you had been > asked to do. The comment about the "file" command still applies, though. > What does the "file" command have to say about /dev/sdf1 (or a copy of > the beginning sectors thereof)? > # dd if=/dev/sdf1 of=somefile count=100 100+0 records in 100+0 records out 51200 bytes (51 kB) copied, 0.0408561 s, 1.3 MB/s file -s somefile somefile: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x76 file -s -k somefile somefile: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x76 # file -s -k /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdf1: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x76 seems like the partition /dev/sdf1 contains an x86 boot sector - so what do I mount?? where is the data?