Annoying follow-up USB question (mounted but not rly?)

[JaimeZX]

I have now done the L&LD reset and plugged in the new SSD for scripts.

Formatted in EXT4.

Merlin GUI sees the drive just fine, but AMTM / Skynet / Diversion all say "No compatible USB device found."

In SSH, fdisk -l identifies it as

/dev/sda1 Start: 129 End: 38936 Blocks: 9895785 ID: 83 System: Linux

So I must be missing something. Halp?

 

[L&LD]

Put it in the other USB port, and/or change the USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 too.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Have you rebooted the router?

 

[JaimeZX]

Put it in the other USB port, and/or change the USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 too.

Tried that. I have moved it from the back port to the front port and changed the system to "USB2." It still mounts as /sda1, ext4.

I have successfully created a sample Samba share (on the SSD's NTFS partition, /sda2) , opened it in Windows, saved a text file to it, then opened it in SSH -> /mnt/Kingston.

Meanwhile AMTM / Skynet / Diversion still say "No compatible USB partitions found." I am confused.

Have you rebooted the router?

Yes.

 

[ColinTaylor]

What did you use to partition and format the drive? amtm?

Can you post the complete output of this command please.

mount | grep sd

 

[JaimeZX]

What did you use to partition and format the drive? amtm?

Can you post the complete output of this command please.

mount | grep sd

/dev/sda2 on /tmp/mnt/KingstonShare type tntfs (rw,nodev,relatime,uid=0,gid=0,umask=00,nls=utf8,min_prealloc_size=64k,max_prealloc_s)

So that's quite interesting. I wonder why it's only mounting one of the partitions?

Formatted/partitioned on a Linux laptop. 10GB for EXT4, 80GB for NTFS.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Formatted/partitioned on a Linux laptop. 10GB for EXT4, 80GB for NTFS.

That's probably why. Check the router's syslog. I think you'll see it failed to mount due to unsupported features.

Use the router to reformat /dev/sda1 with a compatible version of ext4.

 

[JaimeZX]

Hm, yeah. Interesting. I ran /e2fsck /dev/sda1 and it spit back:
/dev/sda1 has unsupported feature(s): metadata_csum
e2fsck: Get a newer version of e2fsck!
Guess a reformat won't hurt.

 

[JaimeZX]

Well. Recreated the partition in fdisk, then reformatted in mke2fs. Which converted it to ext2... still no joy. Refuses to mount, even though it's identified as /dev/sda1... Linux83.
So I try e2fsck again, and I get "Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda1... Grrr.

Okay I deleted BOTH partitions in fdisk, then rebuilt the whole thing in mke2fs. This time it works, but I'm not sure if I should be concerned...

Before I had:
255 heads, 2 sectors/track, 459689 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 510 * 512 = 261120 bytes

Now it's:
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Seems dramatically different. Still. If it worked I wouldn't be complaining. But now the remaining /dev/sda1 doesn't mount at all.

 

[JaimeZX]

AAAAAAAAAAAaaand follow-up to this saga.

FIXED IT.

In Windows. lol

"Mini-Tool Partition Wizard," the same tool I used on my thumbdrive in March 2018 when I first installed the scripts, was the ticket.

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1306 10485760 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1306 11749 83886080 7 HPFS/NTFS

BACK IN BUSINESS.

 

[cmkelley]

So, someone educate me here ... why NTFS on the shared partition? I guess I can sort-of understand wanting a separate partition to share, but why NTFS? What does NTFS have to offer over ext4/journaling when being shared by samba? My preference is always for native filesystems.

 

[ColinTaylor]

So, someone educate me here ... why NTFS on the shared partition?

The convenience of being able to remove the device from the router and plugging it into a Windows 10 PC. Other than that it's a poor choice for a Linux machine.

 

[dev_null]

The convenience of being able to remove the device from the router and plugging it into a Windows 10 PC. Other than that it's a poor choice for a Linux machine.

This was my rationale when I first attached a SSD. After experiencing problems similar to @JamieZX, I decided to format to EXT4 and if I needed to connect to a PC, I would either load an EXT4 driver to Windows, or boot to a live CD of some sort to get to the files. Once formatted to EXT4 the problems disappeared.

But my SSD is not intended for long-term storage. I have a couple of separate NAS' for that. The SSD is mostly just for temporary files and the router itself.

 

[JaimeZX]

What they all said. ^^^

Edit: the thing I find funniest (and most annoying) about this is that neither partitioning and formatting the drive with a Linux laptop NOR partitioning and formatting the drive using the command line in the Linux-based router itself worked. I had to use a tool on a W10 box to create a Linux partition that the router would mount. I would love to know the difference in ext4 between what the laptop created vs the W10 box...

 

[cmkelley]

This was my rationale when I first attached a SSD. After experiencing problems similar to @JamieZX, I decided to format to EXT4 and if I needed to connect to a PC, I would either load an EXT4 driver to Windows, or boot to a live CD of some sort to get to the files. Once formatted to EXT4 the problems disappeared.

But my SSD is not intended for long-term storage. I have a couple of separate NAS' for that. The SSD is mostly just for temporary files and the router itself.

Yeah, I have a separate fileserver as well. I share the SSD to my fileserver, and it backs up the SSD along with all of the fileserver's data nightly to an external hard drive with rsnapshot.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Edit: the thing I find funniest (and most annoying) about this is that neither partitioning and formatting the drive with a Linux laptop NOR partitioning and formatting the drive using the command line in the Linux-based router itself worked. I had to use a tool on a W10 box to create a Linux partition that the router would mount. I would love to know the difference in ext4 between what the laptop created vs the W10 box...

Judging by what you posted in #9 it looks like there was a problem with the geometry of the disk drive. Probably impossible to find out now what that was although the router's syslog might give some clues. Once that was fixed everything else was straight forward. The ext4 compatibility issue is something separate and has been discussed at length before.

 

[JaimeZX]

I'll have to dig in and read more about the ext4 issue I guess. That said, I configured the disk identically (as far as I could tell) from both the Linux laptop and the Windows tool (although the cluster size came out different...) I was surprised when even a single partition / ext2 created on the router didn't work. :dunno:

 

[JaimeZX]

Wish I had seen THIS thread during yesterday's saga. Would have significantly reduced my struggles, I think.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Wish I had seen THIS thread during yesterday's saga. Would have significantly reduced my struggles, I think.

Indeed. And as that post points out, there is now a Wiki entry containing that information and the whole process is automated through amtm.