Topic: USB Hard Drive Enclosure

[baw]

I have two servers that I am managing.  They both have SME6.0.  I want to use a usb hard drive to run backups.  One of the machines is running the backups just fine.  The other is unable to mount the usb drive.  I first noticed that the USB ports were disabled in the bios.  I fixed that problem and was able to get the following information when using lspci -v:

00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1b) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. (Wrong ID) USB Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at cc00 [size=32]
        Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1b) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. (Wrong ID) USB Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
        Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:11.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1b) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. (Wrong ID) USB Controller
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
        Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

When I try to mount the drive I get the following message:

# mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

I am not able to use the lsusb command at all.  If I run it I get the following:

lsusb
cannot open /proc/bus/usb, No such file or directory (2)

Please help me if possible.  

# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1        13    104391   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2            14      9931  79666335   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda3          9932      9964    265072+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *         1        13    104391   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdb2            14      9931  79666335   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdb3          9932      9964    265072+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

[Damian]

Not an area I'm too familiar with but....

If the /proc/bus/usb isn't available on that machine it suggests the kernel doesn't recognise the USB subsystem (or hasn't any drivers loaded). Compare the output of the lsmod command on your two systems to see if any USB or SCSI drivers are loaded (assuming it's an IDE based system).

Damian

[jpeters]

Not sure it this will be helpful but can you view the dmesg file to see any errors from boot up sequence that might provide some clues?

Jpeters

[Texasboy]

I have a 6.0 server that used scsi drives and I had a little problem getting my USB drive working. I made sure my Bios had USB turn on and still nothing. Then I move the usb drive to my top usb port and everything started working. I don't know what the deal was because I have used this motherboard and usb ports before with out problems. I know it sounds crazy but plug it in a different port and "fdisk -l" and see if it picks it up. Also my drive said that some usb ports will not have enough power to run the drive and if you have problems plug in external power to you usb drive. I don't know what type of drive you have but try that to.

Texasboy
 

[psoren]

Hi

Have you tried this: cdrecord --scanbus

Also have a look here: http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/How%20to%20connect%20a%20USB%20Hard%20Disk%20to%20SME%206.0.1-01

Could it be that when it was not enabled in BIOS during install, that it's not found now. You could try to install again with the "upgrade" option.

Per

[baw]

I finally figured out how to get the thing working.  I had to manually install the usb... modules.  Thank you for the suggestions.  I now have another problem.

If I reboot the machine, the modules are not reloaded.  What file do I need to modify to correct this problem?

Example: One of the modules that does not load is usbcore.o.  When modifying the file to load this module, do I simply use the "insmod" command within the file?

Problem #2:

The usb drive is always connected to the server.  How do I force the mount to occur if the system is rebooted?  I believe the file that has to be modified is fstab.  Whenever I look at the file I see the message about using the template files.  When I go to the template file, it is empty.  If I add text to this file, will fstab be revised to include the new lines?

Thanks for the help.

[cc_skavenger]

what commands do you have to issue to get it to work again?  You could add them to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.  If you need to add something to /etc/fstab, create a template fragment:  

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/fstab

cd /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/fstab

pico or vi 60addusbdrive <---can be called whatever

addin the lines for fstab.  Save file.  Expand the template with the command:

/sbin/e-smith/expand-template /etc/fstab

pico or vi /etc/fstab to make sure the changes are in the file.
Reboot.

HTH