Topic: USB Drive Confusion

[jimgoode]

After reading many pages of docs and forum entries, I'm still confused.

I'm trying to use a new USB drive (500GB WD Passport) for backups. SME appears to recognize it, create an automatic mount point, and let me RW to it. It was set up by fstab-rsync as "/media/My_Passport  /dev/sda1". I can cd to the named directory and create files using 'touch' and 'dar' and can list the directory to see my files.

Here's the confusion: the drive does not show up using 'mount', or 'df', even though it's in the fstab. 'umount' says it's not mounted, 'mount' says it is an unrecognized format. 'sfdisk -l' shows /dev/sda1 as an HPFS/NTFS partition and when I tried to reformat (mkfs.vfat -n Disk1 /dev/sda1) the partition nothing appeared to happen.

Any suggestions? Thanks,
Jim

[jimgoode]

Well, I stepped through the following process and now have the drive mounted. Silly me, I tried to change the format from NTFS to VFAT by running the mkfs.vfat command. This time I deleted the existing partition, first. The true test will be to see if the SME Workstation backup will run successfully tonight as scheduled.

fdisk /dev/sda
d to delete the existing partition
n to create a new partition
p for primary partition
1 for partition number
1 for first cylinder
60797 for last cylinder (used whole drive for partition)
w to write to disk and exit

mkfs.vfat -n Disk1 /dev/sda1     to format and label the partition

mkdir /media/backup   to create a mount point

Added '/dev/sda1   /media/backup   vfat   defaults 0 0' to /etc/fstab
Also added it to a file in /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/fstab so it would auto mount on reboot

Like I said, the proof will be if the SME Workstation backup runs tonight without complaining about the file type.
Jim

[janet]

jimgoode

If you intend to use the drive only attached to SME server, then you will get more reliable & faster performance if you format it as ext3

[jimgoode]

Taking Mary's suggestion, I deleted the vfat partition and created an ext3 partition. Does anyone know why writing the inode tables screams up to about 400 tables and then goes glacial? The process is now running at about 3-4 tables every 5 seconds. I tried running it yesterday and the process never seemed to finish. I lost my network connection and retraced my steps this morning.

[root@s01 ~]# mkfs.ext3 -L Disk1 /dev/sda1
mke2fs 1.35 (28-Feb-2004)
Filesystem label=Disk1
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
61046784 inodes, 122087967 blocks
6104398 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=125829120
3726 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
16384 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
        102400000

Writing inode tables:  443/3726

[Stefano]

I suspect you have problems with hd or hd cabinet