Navigating through USB drive with “cd /myOtherFolder” causes “no such directory” error
When navigating the file system of my USB drive in the terminal, some weird things happen that didn't used to happen on my Raspberry Pi B+. I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, so I'll just show what is
I open the command line and navigate to my USB drive with
cd /media/pi/MYUSB/
I use
cd
to enter a folder of the USB drive withcd /myFolder/myOtherFolder
I navigate backwards to
myFolder
withcd ..
I try to navigate again to
myOtherFolder
withcd /myOtherFolder
. However, this raises the bash errorbash: cd: /myOtherFolder: no such file or directory
I have no idea what or why this is happening, but I used to be able to do this without the error message. Sometimes I have power outages that cause the Raspberry Pi to shut off with the USB drive in it, so I have "ghost USB drives" like the ones described in Ghost USB drives left behind when power is cycled off and on.
usb bash
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When navigating the file system of my USB drive in the terminal, some weird things happen that didn't used to happen on my Raspberry Pi B+. I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, so I'll just show what is
I open the command line and navigate to my USB drive with
cd /media/pi/MYUSB/
I use
cd
to enter a folder of the USB drive withcd /myFolder/myOtherFolder
I navigate backwards to
myFolder
withcd ..
I try to navigate again to
myOtherFolder
withcd /myOtherFolder
. However, this raises the bash errorbash: cd: /myOtherFolder: no such file or directory
I have no idea what or why this is happening, but I used to be able to do this without the error message. Sometimes I have power outages that cause the Raspberry Pi to shut off with the USB drive in it, so I have "ghost USB drives" like the ones described in Ghost USB drives left behind when power is cycled off and on.
usb bash
New contributor
add a comment |
When navigating the file system of my USB drive in the terminal, some weird things happen that didn't used to happen on my Raspberry Pi B+. I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, so I'll just show what is
I open the command line and navigate to my USB drive with
cd /media/pi/MYUSB/
I use
cd
to enter a folder of the USB drive withcd /myFolder/myOtherFolder
I navigate backwards to
myFolder
withcd ..
I try to navigate again to
myOtherFolder
withcd /myOtherFolder
. However, this raises the bash errorbash: cd: /myOtherFolder: no such file or directory
I have no idea what or why this is happening, but I used to be able to do this without the error message. Sometimes I have power outages that cause the Raspberry Pi to shut off with the USB drive in it, so I have "ghost USB drives" like the ones described in Ghost USB drives left behind when power is cycled off and on.
usb bash
New contributor
When navigating the file system of my USB drive in the terminal, some weird things happen that didn't used to happen on my Raspberry Pi B+. I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, so I'll just show what is
I open the command line and navigate to my USB drive with
cd /media/pi/MYUSB/
I use
cd
to enter a folder of the USB drive withcd /myFolder/myOtherFolder
I navigate backwards to
myFolder
withcd ..
I try to navigate again to
myOtherFolder
withcd /myOtherFolder
. However, this raises the bash errorbash: cd: /myOtherFolder: no such file or directory
I have no idea what or why this is happening, but I used to be able to do this without the error message. Sometimes I have power outages that cause the Raspberry Pi to shut off with the USB drive in it, so I have "ghost USB drives" like the ones described in Ghost USB drives left behind when power is cycled off and on.
usb bash
usb bash
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edited yesterday
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asked Mar 3 at 18:03
Henry WestfallHenry Westfall
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You put a leading / to your path names! That's the root directory, meaning what you write next is an absolute path.
Your /myFolder/myOtherFolder is not on your USB if it's mounted inside /media/pi/MYUSB/ anyway.
But you can use cd myOtherFolder
in the case you're asking. I suggest reading some basic tutorial about Linux's (or Unix) file handling, filesystems, and such.
New contributor
add a comment |
To go into a bit more detail —
Whether you come from a Windows or Mac OS X background, you will be used to external drives being independent places from your hard disk (more or less).
Part of Unix tradition is "avoid special cases wherever possible". For instance in Unix (and GNU/Linux), a keyboard is represented as a file that can be opened and read from just like a text file. So is a serial port (which can be written to as well). On a Raspberry Pi even the GPIO pins can be controlled like this. There is a file called /dev/zero
that produces a sequence of 0-bytes when you read it. Etc.
This was a brilliant idea as it allowed programs to be constructed without having all sorts of special cases.
Anyway, in a similar tradition, there is one directory structure for the entire system, starting at /
(the root directory). No special cases, no "drive letters". Just /
.
Drives can be "attached" somewhere in this structure using the mount
command (an Raspberry Pi is configured to do this automatically, but you can also do it manually).
Every file's path descends from /
in some way (for example, /home/pi/test.txt
). Because of this, a path starting with /
is assumed to be an "absolute" path, starting from the root directory of the entire system. Without the /
at the start, it is considered a "relative" path, i.e. it starts from the current directory.
Two other tricks—you probably know that a path starting with ..
refers to the parent directory. A path starting with ~
starts from your home directory, e.g. ~/test.txt
works the same no matter what your current directory is.
New contributor
3
For completeness, a path starting with.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typingfoo
will cause the$PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file namedfoo
will be executed. But typing./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search$PATH
.
– Monty Harder
2 days ago
add a comment |
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2 Answers
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2 Answers
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You put a leading / to your path names! That's the root directory, meaning what you write next is an absolute path.
Your /myFolder/myOtherFolder is not on your USB if it's mounted inside /media/pi/MYUSB/ anyway.
But you can use cd myOtherFolder
in the case you're asking. I suggest reading some basic tutorial about Linux's (or Unix) file handling, filesystems, and such.
New contributor
add a comment |
You put a leading / to your path names! That's the root directory, meaning what you write next is an absolute path.
Your /myFolder/myOtherFolder is not on your USB if it's mounted inside /media/pi/MYUSB/ anyway.
But you can use cd myOtherFolder
in the case you're asking. I suggest reading some basic tutorial about Linux's (or Unix) file handling, filesystems, and such.
New contributor
add a comment |
You put a leading / to your path names! That's the root directory, meaning what you write next is an absolute path.
Your /myFolder/myOtherFolder is not on your USB if it's mounted inside /media/pi/MYUSB/ anyway.
But you can use cd myOtherFolder
in the case you're asking. I suggest reading some basic tutorial about Linux's (or Unix) file handling, filesystems, and such.
New contributor
You put a leading / to your path names! That's the root directory, meaning what you write next is an absolute path.
Your /myFolder/myOtherFolder is not on your USB if it's mounted inside /media/pi/MYUSB/ anyway.
But you can use cd myOtherFolder
in the case you're asking. I suggest reading some basic tutorial about Linux's (or Unix) file handling, filesystems, and such.
New contributor
New contributor
answered Mar 3 at 18:13
NyosNyos
45125
45125
New contributor
New contributor
add a comment |
add a comment |
To go into a bit more detail —
Whether you come from a Windows or Mac OS X background, you will be used to external drives being independent places from your hard disk (more or less).
Part of Unix tradition is "avoid special cases wherever possible". For instance in Unix (and GNU/Linux), a keyboard is represented as a file that can be opened and read from just like a text file. So is a serial port (which can be written to as well). On a Raspberry Pi even the GPIO pins can be controlled like this. There is a file called /dev/zero
that produces a sequence of 0-bytes when you read it. Etc.
This was a brilliant idea as it allowed programs to be constructed without having all sorts of special cases.
Anyway, in a similar tradition, there is one directory structure for the entire system, starting at /
(the root directory). No special cases, no "drive letters". Just /
.
Drives can be "attached" somewhere in this structure using the mount
command (an Raspberry Pi is configured to do this automatically, but you can also do it manually).
Every file's path descends from /
in some way (for example, /home/pi/test.txt
). Because of this, a path starting with /
is assumed to be an "absolute" path, starting from the root directory of the entire system. Without the /
at the start, it is considered a "relative" path, i.e. it starts from the current directory.
Two other tricks—you probably know that a path starting with ..
refers to the parent directory. A path starting with ~
starts from your home directory, e.g. ~/test.txt
works the same no matter what your current directory is.
New contributor
3
For completeness, a path starting with.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typingfoo
will cause the$PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file namedfoo
will be executed. But typing./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search$PATH
.
– Monty Harder
2 days ago
add a comment |
To go into a bit more detail —
Whether you come from a Windows or Mac OS X background, you will be used to external drives being independent places from your hard disk (more or less).
Part of Unix tradition is "avoid special cases wherever possible". For instance in Unix (and GNU/Linux), a keyboard is represented as a file that can be opened and read from just like a text file. So is a serial port (which can be written to as well). On a Raspberry Pi even the GPIO pins can be controlled like this. There is a file called /dev/zero
that produces a sequence of 0-bytes when you read it. Etc.
This was a brilliant idea as it allowed programs to be constructed without having all sorts of special cases.
Anyway, in a similar tradition, there is one directory structure for the entire system, starting at /
(the root directory). No special cases, no "drive letters". Just /
.
Drives can be "attached" somewhere in this structure using the mount
command (an Raspberry Pi is configured to do this automatically, but you can also do it manually).
Every file's path descends from /
in some way (for example, /home/pi/test.txt
). Because of this, a path starting with /
is assumed to be an "absolute" path, starting from the root directory of the entire system. Without the /
at the start, it is considered a "relative" path, i.e. it starts from the current directory.
Two other tricks—you probably know that a path starting with ..
refers to the parent directory. A path starting with ~
starts from your home directory, e.g. ~/test.txt
works the same no matter what your current directory is.
New contributor
3
For completeness, a path starting with.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typingfoo
will cause the$PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file namedfoo
will be executed. But typing./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search$PATH
.
– Monty Harder
2 days ago
add a comment |
To go into a bit more detail —
Whether you come from a Windows or Mac OS X background, you will be used to external drives being independent places from your hard disk (more or less).
Part of Unix tradition is "avoid special cases wherever possible". For instance in Unix (and GNU/Linux), a keyboard is represented as a file that can be opened and read from just like a text file. So is a serial port (which can be written to as well). On a Raspberry Pi even the GPIO pins can be controlled like this. There is a file called /dev/zero
that produces a sequence of 0-bytes when you read it. Etc.
This was a brilliant idea as it allowed programs to be constructed without having all sorts of special cases.
Anyway, in a similar tradition, there is one directory structure for the entire system, starting at /
(the root directory). No special cases, no "drive letters". Just /
.
Drives can be "attached" somewhere in this structure using the mount
command (an Raspberry Pi is configured to do this automatically, but you can also do it manually).
Every file's path descends from /
in some way (for example, /home/pi/test.txt
). Because of this, a path starting with /
is assumed to be an "absolute" path, starting from the root directory of the entire system. Without the /
at the start, it is considered a "relative" path, i.e. it starts from the current directory.
Two other tricks—you probably know that a path starting with ..
refers to the parent directory. A path starting with ~
starts from your home directory, e.g. ~/test.txt
works the same no matter what your current directory is.
New contributor
To go into a bit more detail —
Whether you come from a Windows or Mac OS X background, you will be used to external drives being independent places from your hard disk (more or less).
Part of Unix tradition is "avoid special cases wherever possible". For instance in Unix (and GNU/Linux), a keyboard is represented as a file that can be opened and read from just like a text file. So is a serial port (which can be written to as well). On a Raspberry Pi even the GPIO pins can be controlled like this. There is a file called /dev/zero
that produces a sequence of 0-bytes when you read it. Etc.
This was a brilliant idea as it allowed programs to be constructed without having all sorts of special cases.
Anyway, in a similar tradition, there is one directory structure for the entire system, starting at /
(the root directory). No special cases, no "drive letters". Just /
.
Drives can be "attached" somewhere in this structure using the mount
command (an Raspberry Pi is configured to do this automatically, but you can also do it manually).
Every file's path descends from /
in some way (for example, /home/pi/test.txt
). Because of this, a path starting with /
is assumed to be an "absolute" path, starting from the root directory of the entire system. Without the /
at the start, it is considered a "relative" path, i.e. it starts from the current directory.
Two other tricks—you probably know that a path starting with ..
refers to the parent directory. A path starting with ~
starts from your home directory, e.g. ~/test.txt
works the same no matter what your current directory is.
New contributor
edited 2 days ago
Peter Mortensen
1,81911117
1,81911117
New contributor
answered Mar 4 at 0:01
ArteliusArtelius
1911
1911
New contributor
New contributor
3
For completeness, a path starting with.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typingfoo
will cause the$PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file namedfoo
will be executed. But typing./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search$PATH
.
– Monty Harder
2 days ago
add a comment |
3
For completeness, a path starting with.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typingfoo
will cause the$PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file namedfoo
will be executed. But typing./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search$PATH
.
– Monty Harder
2 days ago
3
3
For completeness, a path starting with
.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typing foo
will cause the $PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file named foo
will be executed. But typing ./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search $PATH
.– Monty Harder
2 days ago
For completeness, a path starting with
.
refers to the current directory. This is important when one wishes to run a command stored in the current directory: Simply typing foo
will cause the $PATH
to be searched, and the first directory listed in it that contains a file named foo
will be executed. But typing ./foo
instructs the shell to explicitly look in the current directory rather than search $PATH
.– Monty Harder
2 days ago
add a comment |
Henry Westfall is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Henry Westfall is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Henry Westfall is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
Henry Westfall is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct.
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