Mount external USB disk

Summary:

problems mounting ext3 formated usb drive

Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 12 Jun 2010 16:49

I have a MyBook World White light with a WD MyBook hooked up to it via usb. The USB disk is formated in ext3. Whenever I turn on the World Edition drive the usb mybook turns itself on automatically right afterwards, but that is where the automation ends. The World Edition drive does not mount the usb drive which is really annoying. I am however able to mount it manually logging in via ssh and entering the appropriate commands. And after I mount it I am able to use the usb drive as a rsync destination.

But what I'd really like was if the usb drive could be automatically mounted and show as a share in samba. Is this possible?

If not, is there a way to manually add it to samba? I tried editing the ".overall_share" file where the internal samba shares are listed. Then I tried to restart samba. That didn't work, though I'm not sure I did it right.

Help would be appriciated.

Re: Mount external USB disk

TeinturMan 12 Jun 2010 17:50

Hi fr33m4n,
if you are already a member of the http://highlevelbits.free.fr

The MybookClone Feature Pack is handling the rsync by mounting the drive, then rsync, at the scheduled time.

it will also add it to a "backup" samba share, when you mount it via the "Restore menu".

Regards,

Re: Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 12 Jun 2010 18:58

Well, this isn't exactly what I was looking for, though I suppose it might work? The thing is that I am using the MyBook World as a backup destination for another more powerful NAS I have. But sometimes the other NAS is offline or unavailable and then it would be nice to be able to access the usb disk connected to the MyBook World over samba. I appreciate your suggestion TeinturMan but I don't think I'll be trying it out just yet, because I don't feel like paying for something when it's not really what I'm looking for.

Re: Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 13 Jun 2010 14:25

As far as I can tell the system is supposed to automount external usb drives formated in ext3, but for some reason my drive is not mounted. There is a script in /etc/init.d/ called S01auto_mountd. I have tried starting this script manually but it doesn't seem to actually work properly. When I start S01auto_mountd it prints this:

Mounting /DataVolume : Repairing /DataVolume
FAIL
/ # X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.2
Content-type: text/html

and then it stops responding and I have to restart the ssh session before I can issue any further commands.

What is going on with my unit? This is really weird.

Last edited on 13 Jun 2010 14:26 by fr33m4n Show more

Re: Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 13 Jun 2010 15:51

I have tested some more.

To add insult to injury I have discovered that if I try to connect NTFS or HFS+ usb disks to the MyBook World those DO get automounted and shared over samba.

This gave me the idea that I could monitor the log file and try to examine the difference from when I insert the ext3 disk and when I insert the NTFS/HFS+ disk, and from that figure out why the ext3 disk is not mounted and shared.

First, here is the output from the ext3 disk that is not mounted:

Jun 13 17:31:11 MyBookWorld user.notice [15809]: disk at /devices/platform/oxnas-ehci.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/host4/target4:0:0/4:0:0:0
Jun 13 17:31:23 MyBookWorld daemon.info wixEvent[4463]: USB Status - USB device inserted.
Jun 13 17:31:26 MyBookWorld user.notice [15463]: ... no modules for USB Western Digital  My Book         
Jun 13 17:31:27 MyBookWorld user.notice [15481]: Setup usb-storage for USB product 1058/1100/175

After making sure that no other entries were coming I used the WD Web UI to safely remove the ext3 disk. Log entry not included.

Second, here is the output from the NTFS/HFS+ disk:

Jun 13 17:34:54 MyBookWorld user.notice [17718]: disk at /devices/platform/oxnas-ehci.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/host5/target5:0:0/5:0:0:0
Jun 13 17:35:10 MyBookWorld user.notice [17369]: ... no modules for USB Western Digital My Passport 070A
Jun 13 17:35:11 MyBookWorld user.notice [17384]: Setup usb-storage for USB product 1058/70a/2003
Jun 13 17:35:14 MyBookWorld daemon.info wixEvent[4463]: USB Status - USB device inserted.

There is only one difference between these log files and it is a small one. The difference is the order in which the entries are written. The ext3 disk causes the "USB device inserted" entry to appear as the second item, while the NTFS/HFS+ disk causes this entry to appear last.

This doesn't help me much as far as I can tell. Any other suggestions as to what I can try?

Re: Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 14 Jun 2010 11:52

I just learned about the dmesg command to disply kernel mesages. I ran it before and after plugging in the ext3 drive and this is the message that I got.

usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using oxnas-ehci and address 2
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 2
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       20EADS External  1.75 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029168 512-byte hardware sectors (2000399 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029168 512-byte hardware sectors (2000399 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sdb: sdb1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
usb-storage: device scan complete
oxnas_wd810_leds_state state=1
ufsd: failed to mount sdb1
EXT3-fs: Unrecognized mount option "gid=1000" or missing value

What is "gid=1000"? This seems like a better clue as to what is going wrong.

Re: Mount external USB disk

fr33m4n 14 Jun 2010 15:58

Is there a way to find out which script is responsible for mounting NTFS and HFS+ usb disks? If I could find that script and take a look at it then maybe I could figure out why it's not working with ext3 disks and possibly fix it?

Btw, are there ANYONE that has been able to actually have the MyBook White Light automount a ext3 usb disk? I ask because some people claim they have talked with WD and WD claimed that it is not supported, meaning there is nothing wrong with my unit.

Re: Mount external USB disk

gerscht 09 Aug 2010 18:16

-edit, solution below-

Last edited on 09 Aug 2010 19:07 by gerscht Show more

Re: Mount external USB disk

gerscht 09 Aug 2010 19:06

If you just want to mount it once to copy files via the console, just use fdisk to find the device

fdisk -l

Create a dirctory and mount it in there:

mkdir /root/usb
mount /dev/sdc1 /root/usb

(/dev/sdc1 is the result from fdisk -l)

Hope this helps,

Re: Mount external USB disk

Yarrago 19 Sep 2010 09:34

I have just posted how to do this:
http://blog.yarrago.com/2010/09/mount-and-automount-ext3-usb-drives-on.html

Let me know how you go if you try it (probably better off contacting me on the blog as I don't check here often).

Yarrago

Last edited on 19 Sep 2010 10:32 by Yarrago Show more