[Novalug] Help with flash drive audio player

[David A. Hammond]

Hello,

I need help getting a flash drive audio player working
again.

My wife has a SanDisk sansa e-260 flash drive audio player.
Until a few days ago, I had no problems mounting it on
either of two linux boxes so that she could transfer files
that she had ripped from cds onto it.  I have a udev rule
set up so that udev creates a symlink (/dev/sansa) when it
detects the drive.  I then mount the drive on /media/sansa.

A few days ago this just stopped working on both machines.  I
am unaware of any changes I might have made.  I have not been
working on any system reconfigurations on either machine,
let alone on both of them.  In case it matters, one of the
machines is running Fedora Core 3 (yeah, I know it's old)
and the other one is running CentOS 5.1.

When I plug it in, the usb system detects it but apparently has no
idea what it is.  /dev/sansa doesn't exist.  I can't mount it.
This is all I find in the log:

Jan 28 10:42:50 mente kernel: usb 2-1: new high speed USB device using 
ehci_hcd and address 20
Jan 28 10:42:50 mente kernel: usb 2-1: configuration #128 chosen from 1 
choice

In contrast, when I plug in my usb thumb drive into the same port,
the thumb drive identifies itself, udev is able to provide a
symlink (/dev/usbstick), and I can mount the drive.
This is what I find in the log:

Jan 28 10:44:12 mente kernel: usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using 
ehci_hcd and address 21
Jan 28 10:44:12 mente kernel: usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan 28 10:44:12 mente kernel: scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass 
Storage devices
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel:   Vendor: USB 2.0   Model: USB Flash Drive 
   Rev: 0.00
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access 
    ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: SCSI device sdf: 15794175 512-byte hdwr 
sectors (8087 MB)
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sdf: Write Protect is off
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sdf: assuming drive cache: write through
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: SCSI device sdf: 15794175 512-byte hdwr 
sectors (8087 MB)
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sdf: Write Protect is off
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sdf: assuming drive cache: write through
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel:  sdf: sdf1
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdf
Jan 28 10:44:17 mente kernel: sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0

For what it's worth, when I plug the sansa into a Windows XP Pro box,
it gets detected as a sansa e-260.  I can't do any more with it since
I don't have a driver installed (why, pray tell, would Windows need a
driver?  It's just like a thumb drive.).

Any ideas on where to start looking will be greatly appreciated
(especially by my wife).

Thanks in advance,
Dave Hammond