Hey, have you ever used an extenal USB hard drive on Linux? I have a 500GB disk I want to plug into a server, and the disk appears to mount on /proc/bus/usb/ when I plug it in, but I can't copy any files to it or it's subdirectories, even as root.
The line in mtab looks thus: usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
Googling I'm finding lots of references on how to mount an external drive, but not what to do when you can't write to it. Any experience with the matter, or suggestions? I feel like I'm missing something simple.
Usbdevfs contains the raw USB devices. Not proper block (or char) devices suitable for mounting. Those are provided by the SCSI subsystem. If you only have one SCSI disk drive, that will be /dev/sda. The first partition will be /dev/sda1. Some distributions may also have C/DVDRW drives or even hard disk drives emulated as SCSI.
The same is true of thumb drives; and for the same reasons.
An fstab line off the top of my head (untested) might be: /dev/sda1 /mnt/mydisk ext3 defaults,noauto,user 0 0 You will notice that it only really differs from your other mount(s) in that the device node is /dev/sd* rather than /dev/hd*
Ah ha, so I sort of have to mount it twice. That was the missing link:
# mount /dev/hdc3 on / type ext3 (rw) none on /proc type proc (rw) usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw) /dev/hdc1 on /boot type ext3 (rw) none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) /dev/sda1 on /mnt/lacie type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
Well, you may not need to mount usbdevfs. You certainly don't need to for mounting disks. You will need to have it mounted for anything which needs /proc/bus/usb or which uses libusb (which needs /proc/bus/usb). Disks just happen not to be one of those things. It doesn't hurt anything to mount it. Unless you're hurting for memory so much that you want to not load the kernel module that supports it.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2007-10-09 02:51 am (UTC)Good thing I don't authenticate against a Kerberos domain.
Or run Windows.
no subject
on 2007-10-09 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-10-09 01:59 pm (UTC)"A x 18770"
no subject
on 2007-10-09 02:14 pm (UTC)Hey, have you ever used an extenal USB hard drive on Linux? I have a 500GB disk I want to plug into a server, and the disk appears to mount on /proc/bus/usb/ when I plug it in, but I can't copy any files to it or it's subdirectories, even as root.
The line in mtab looks thus:
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs rw 0 0
The output of tree looks thus:
Googling I'm finding lots of references on how to mount an external drive, but not what to do when you can't write to it. Any experience with the matter, or suggestions? I feel like I'm missing something simple.
no subject
on 2007-10-09 02:42 pm (UTC)Usbdevfs contains the raw USB devices. Not proper block (or char) devices suitable for mounting. Those are provided by the SCSI subsystem. If you only have one SCSI disk drive, that will be /dev/sda. The first partition will be /dev/sda1. Some distributions may also have C/DVDRW drives or even hard disk drives emulated as SCSI.
The same is true of thumb drives; and for the same reasons.
An fstab line off the top of my head (untested) might be:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/mydisk ext3 defaults,noauto,user 0 0
You will notice that it only really differs from your other mount(s) in that the device node is /dev/sd* rather than /dev/hd*
no subject
on 2007-10-09 03:26 pm (UTC)# mount
/dev/hdc3 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/hdc1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /mnt/lacie type vfat (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
Thank you for the help.
no subject
on 2007-10-09 03:36 pm (UTC)No prob.
no subject
on 2007-10-09 05:53 am (UTC)no subject
on 2007-10-09 01:08 pm (UTC)usb protection
on 2010-10-20 12:20 pm (UTC)