mounting usb frustration

[Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>]

I mounted a USB flash card with a reader OK once, but failed the
second time. With two hard disks, an external USB mass storage deveice
and with a USB-key, all mounted using sda-sdd interfaces,  

  # mount -t vfat /dev/sde1 /media/reader 
  mount: special device /dev/sde1 does not exist

Indeed, udev has not generated any such interface. I have sdc, sdc1,
sdd, sdd1, sde, sdf, sdf1. The sda and sdb interfaces are for hard
disks. 

The flash card reader is seen on the USB bus and the necessary modules
are loaded.

But I get a very odd report from trying to mount sde1: :

  $ dmesg | tail
  sdf: assuming drive cache: write through
  SCSI device sdf: 234441648 512-byte hdwr sectors (120034 MB)
  sdf: Write Protect is off
  sdf: Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
  sdf: assuming drive cache: write through sdf: sdf1
  sd 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdf
  usb-storage: device scan complete
  FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
  VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.

The message about FAT on sdb1 is correct, for it is ext2. Since udev
had created a sdf1, if I try to mount using it: 

  # mount -t vfat /dev/sdf1 /media/reader 
  mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdf1,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

I get the sense that for some reason udev is not creating sde1, and so
sdf and sdf1 are created, but can't be used. I'm running Etch, and
udev is 0.105-4.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM