Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : How I got my USB Hard Drive to work...


hecresper
07-11-2002, 07:17 PM
...and lived to tell about it!

Success is sweet!

I got my USB hard drive to work with Slackware 8 by using modules.

Here goes my thought process:

1. I had gone to www.linux-usb.org and read thru a few pages, but things still seem a bit confusing

2. I had tried searching this forum and the Internet for answers specific to Slackware, but to no avail

3. I started reading thru the Kernel-HOWTO in /usr/doc/HOWTO and it mentioned modules to load support for stuff that was left out of the kernel

4. I knew that the main modules file for Slackware is /etc/rc.d/rc.modules so I read thru it and saw a few interesting lines concerning USB support

5. From information that I had seen in www.linux-usb.org, I was able to determine the type of USB controller in my laptop by doing a: more /proc/pci When read carefully, this file tells you a lot about your system. Anyways, my laptop has a standard Intel USB controller - UHCI

6. In /etc/rc.d/rc.modules, I uncommented(remove hash character) from the lines that loaded support for my UHCI controller and the one that loaded support for USB Mass Storage:

#Universal Host Controller Interface (Intel standard):
/sbin/modprobe usb-uhci

#USB Mass Storage support:
/sbin/modprobe usb-storage

7. Another important thing to note is that SCSI support has to be enabled too. SCSI support was enabled by default on the kernel I ended up with after installing Slackware.

8. I rebooted my laptop and after signing on, I did a:

dmesg | more

to find out if it had recognized my USB controller and the USB hd. It did! :-)

9. Now all I had to do was mount the two partitions that I have on my USB hd. Because Linux uses SCSI support to talk to USB Storage devices, I had to mount thru the /dev/sda device to a directory in my home folder:

/dev/sda is the main device; the whole usb hd
/dev/sda1 is the first partition on my usb hd
/dev/sda2 is the second partition on my usb hd

~#mkdir usbhd1
~#mkdir usbhd2
~#mount /dev/sda1 -t vfat ~/usbhd1
~#mount /dev/sda2 -t vfat ~/usbhd2

10. Voila! I could finally read and write to my USB hd in Slackware.

11. I made a 'usbmnt' executable with the mount commands in it:

~#pico usbmnt

In the file I typed:

#Mounting Partition 1 from USB Hard Drive
echo "Mounting Partition 1 from USB Hard Drive"
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 ~/usbhd1

#Mounting Partition 2 from USB Hard Drive
echo "Mounting Partition 2 from USB Hard Drive"
mount -t vfat /dev/sda2 ~/usbhd2

I saved the file and closed 'pico'

To make 'usbmnt' executable:

~#chmod +x usbmnt

Now all I do is issue the 'usbmnt' command to mount the partitions on my USB Hard Drive.

This is awesome! I love tinkering with Linux!

Modules are your friends!

camelrider
07-12-2002, 04:13 AM
And if you want them to be mounted when you boot you can add them to your /etc/fstab. :cool: