External USB disk problems

[landy88]

Hi,

I have an external USB disk attached to my BubbaTwo with a lot of files on. There is no problem accessing the disk for read and write as long as it is mounted. However, it does not automatically mount after a power outage or a restart, neither will it mount on the same path; sometimes disk0, sometimes disk1. Sometimes it unmounts by itself. On the home page for BubbaTwo the disk utilization info does not include the external disk space, neither can I see the size, used or not, of the external disk from any client machine.

How can I have the disk to automatically mount after reboot, and to the same path?
How can I, and normal users, see the free space on the external disk?

thanks

[landy88]

Was my questions unclear, or am I the only one with these problems?

Appreciate any help, really

[6feet5]

Hi,

Automatic mounts have several solutions. The easiest one is probably to just add a row to '/etc/fstab'. The important part here is to use a unique device node. Using '/dev/sdb1' or similar will probably not help as this name depend on the order the units are discovered at boot time. They could be the same most of the time, but don't bet on it.

The safest name to use is the uuid-name. Connect your USB device and examine the name by the last entries from the output of 'dmesg'. When you know the device name, do a

Code: Select all

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

The disk pointing at the device you got from dmesg, is the one you want. Once you have the uuid, add it to the '/etc/fstab' file. Something similar to:

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/dev/disk/by-uuid/c7f180e1-3548-488c-956e-d8e3ba5a52ce /home/storage/extern/disk_0      ext3 defaults 0 2

(all on one row)
This will mount the disk with uuid 'c7f180e1-3548-488c-956e-d8e3ba5a52ce' at mount point '/home/storage/extern/disk_0' on boot. I haven't tried this on a unit with several USB-disks connected but I think it will work.

As for the last question, I believe this is for the excito team to answer.

/Johan

[landy88]

Thanks Johan,

I truly appreciate your help.

Cheers

[tor]

Hi landy88 and 6feet5,

landy88, which software version are you running? From the 1.2.1 release all external disks should be mounted persistently with their uuid as 6feet5 mention above. The only exception is NTFS formatted disks. These don't provide any uuid and thus cant be mounted in a way that could be called persistent.

/Tor

[landy88]

Hi Tor,

your question is absolutely "spot on". I run my Bubba|Two on version 1.0.8-1 and I really want to get up on the newest release. How do I do that without wiping out all i have on my exisiting disk?

Cheers

[tor]

Hi landy88,

If the upgrade fails. It is most likely that an earlier upgrade has failed for some reason. Could you please contact [email protected] and we will help you sort this out.

/Tor

[landy88]

Everything i OK now after running apt-get update and apt-get install. Thanks!