[KLUG Members] USB2 HDD on Linux

[bfdamkoehler at worldnet.att.net]

I don't know about the IOGear USB2 but I have used a couple of Western Digitals, 
IOMegas, etc. My experience is mostly on Mandrake 9.0 or 9.2 (linux 2.4.x).

If you are only going to use one drive and never swap it this is serious 
overkill. Anyway, this is how I do it. I haven't talked to anyone else so I 
don't know if there is a better way.

USB drives show up as some /dev/sdX. If you have only one drive it will probably 
be /dev/sda. I use a shell script to locate the /dev/sdX and mount any 
partitions on it. I used another to perform the unmounts.

This requires that you have a dump of the partition table on the disk. The 
script searches for a known pattern. If it finds the pattern it tries to mount 
the partitions.

If you are going to remove the usb cable, power down the drive, etc, you should 
sync first and umount any partitions. As long as you do that you can hot swap 
them to your hearts content. I have been forced to reboot a time or two because 
I forget to do that!

I don't do anything about fsck'ing the drives at mount time. I guess that I 
haven't been burned too badly by powering down without umounting. Non-journaled 
file systems like ext2 or fat32 are more sensitive than journalled filesystems.

The following is an example script that mounts three partitions on an external 
disk. I only scan up to /dev/sdl. Thus far I haven't needed to go any farther.

! /bin/ksh
#
#   mnt_wd_ext.sh
#
#   This command file locates the device that my WD external firewire/USB2 disk
#   lives on and mounts the partitions on it.
#   It is invoked as:
#
#       sh mnt_wd_ext.sh
#
#   where
#
#       no cmd line args are required
#
# Variable  Definition
# --------  ----------
#   $0      the script file name
#
#   Revision History:
#   Version - Author        - Date      - Description
#     01       BFDamkoehler 08-Jun-04     initial edit
#


# 
#
#   It is invoked as:
#
#       chk_disk_for_partitions dev_name
#
#   where
#
#       dev_name is a device name such as /dev/sda
#
#   Revision History:
#   Version - Author        - Date  -  Description
#      01     BFDamkoehler  08-Jun-04  initial edit
#

     chk_disk_for_partitions ()
     {
         fdisk $1 2>/dev/null >$TMP_DIR/fs$$.tmp  <<-THE_END
p
q
THE_END
         echo "Testing ${1}"
         grep -q "1      4079  32764536    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)" $TMP_DIR/fs$$.tmp
         if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
             echo "mounting partitions of " $1
             set -x
             mount ${1}1 /fat1
             mount ${1}2 /fat2
             mount ${1}3 /ext
             set +x
             exit 0
         fi

     } # end of "chk_disk_for_partitions ()"

#
#   make sure that our environment variables are defined
#

     if [ "$TMP_DIR" = "" ] ; then
         echo "${0}: the environment variable TMP_DIR does not exist"
         exit 1
     fi

#
#   go fer it
#

     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sda
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdb
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdc
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdd
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sde
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdf
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdg
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdh
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdi
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdj
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdk
     chk_disk_for_partitions /dev/sdl
     exit 0







Michael Lueck wrote:
> Anyone have hands on experience with something like an IOGear USB2 drive
> connecting to Linux? Looking to support: Hot plug mode, manual mount. 2.6.7
> Kernel on Debian testing. (What do they call that, Sarg or something like it?)
> 
> Not finding much useful in Google before just plugging it in.
> 
> TIA!
> 
> Michael Lueck
> Lueck Data Systems
> http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Members mailing list
> Members at kalamazoolinux.org
> 
>