USB Hard Drive on Debian (woody) - Kernel 2.4.24
Barry Skidmore
with kernel 2.4.24.
I have been able to partition the USB drive as ext2 using the
SystemRescue CD (v0.2.9) with 'QtParted'. It shows up as 'dev/sda', with the
partition as 'dev/sda1'. However, when I try to use 'Partimage' on the
rescue CD to back up the partitions which reside on my hard drive, I
receive an error that there may not be enough room on the target disk
(not true) or I might not have permissions to write to the disk (the
rescue CD runs as root).
So, I am now trying to mount the USB drive from Debian to check into
this problem further, but have been unable to. The drive does not show
up when I boot the system (or do an 'fdisk -l'), even though I do see
that usb is enabled:
usb.c: registered new driver hub
host/uhci.c: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver V1.1
When I try to do what's below, I get the following error:
# mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1
# mkfs.ext2: No such device or address while trying to determine file
system size
When I try to do what's below, I get the following error:
# mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device
(same error with 'mount -t ext2 /dev/sda /mnt')
Any advice would be appreciated.
Barry
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-us...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listm...@lists.debian.org
Robert Voppmann
> I am trying to use an external USB 1.1 drive on a Debian (woody) system
> with kernel 2.4.24.
>
> I have been able to partition the USB drive as ext2 using the
> SystemRescue CD (v0.2.9) with 'QtParted'. It shows up as 'dev/sda', with the
> partition as 'dev/sda1'. However, when I try to use 'Partimage' on the
> rescue CD to back up the partitions which reside on my hard drive, I
> receive an error that there may not be enough room on the target disk
> (not true) or I might not have permissions to write to the disk (the
> rescue CD runs as root).
>
> So, I am now trying to mount the USB drive from Debian to check into
> this problem further, but have been unable to. The drive does not show
> up when I boot the system (or do an 'fdisk -l'), even though I do see
> that usb is enabled:
>
> usb.c: registered new driver hub
> host/uhci.c: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver V1.1
>
> When I try to do what's below, I get the following error:
> # mkfs -t ext2 /dev/sda1
> # mkfs.ext2: No such device or address while trying to determine file
> system size
>
> When I try to do what's below, I get the following error:
> # mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt
> # mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device
When I tried using an external usb-hard disk with the System Rescue CD, I
had to load the scsi module manually (modprobe sd_mod). You should be
able to see if the drive has been attached to a device by doing
dmesg
and finding something like
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Regards,
Robert.
Barry Skidmore
The sd_mod module does not exist on my system. As I recall, when I
compiled the 2.4.24 kernel, I did not include scsi support, as I forgot
that it is required for usb drives. So, I need to recompile the kernel
with scsi support, is that correct?
Barry
> When I tried using an external usb-hard disk with the System Rescue CD, I
> had to load the scsi module manually (modprobe sd_mod). You should be
> able to see if the drive has been attached to a device by doing
>
> dmesg
>
> and finding something like
>
> Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>
> Regards,
Robert Voppmann
Hi Barry,
> The sd_mod module does not exist on my system. As I recall, when I
> compiled the 2.4.24 kernel, I did not include scsi support, as I forgot
> that it is required for usb drives. So, I need to recompile the kernel
> with scsi support, is that correct?
Yes. You need the usb-storage module, which is an "interface between the
USB stack and the SCSI layer".
The usb-guide says:
"Since the mass storage driver presents the USB device as a SCSI device,
you need to turn on SCSI support, which is under SCSI support in the
configuration script. You should also turn on subordinate options as
appropriate to your mass storage device - usually one or more of SCSI disk
support, SCSI tape support, SCSI CD-ROM support and SCSI generic support.
After you have compiled the kernel and rebooted (or added the relevant
modules, which is usb-storage.o), you should check /proc/scsi/scsi.
Information about your device should be listed."
http://www.linux-usb.org/USB-guide/x498.html
Good luck,
Robert.
p.s. sd_mod is not necessarily the module you need, but scsi support is
needed anyway. sd_mod just happened to be the one that I needed on the
SystemRescueCD.
Barry Skidmore
I have recompiled the kernel (2.4.24) to include scsi support in
addition to usb. Here are the relevent lines from dmesg:
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
es1371: version v0.32 time 17:29:13 Jan 31 2004
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
host/uhci.c: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v1.1
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
However, there is nothing listed in /proc/scsi/scsi about the usb hard
drive and I can not mount it.:
Contents of /proc/scsi/scsi:
Attached devices: none
Results of mount:
# mount -t ext2 /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device
(as a reminder, the SystemRescue CD shows the drive as sda, and the
partition as sda1)
Do you have any other thoughts?
Barry
> Yes. You need the usb-storage module, which is an "interface between the
> USB stack and the SCSI layer".
>
> After you have compiled the kernel and rebooted (or added the relevant
> modules, which is usb-storage.o), you should check /proc/scsi/scsi.
> Information about your device should be listed."
Robert Voppmann
> Robert,
>
> I have recompiled the kernel (2.4.24) to include scsi support in
> addition to usb. Here are the relevent lines from dmesg:
>
> ...
>
> However, there is nothing listed in /proc/scsi/scsi about the usb hard
> drive and I can not mount it.:
>
> Contents of /proc/scsi/scsi:
> Attached devices: none
:-(
Can you compare lsmod output before and after running parted?
And check dmesg again afterwards for that wanted "Attached scsi disk
sd* ..." line? AFAIK you can't mount a /dev/sd* as long as no device has
been attached to it by the Kernel.
(You don't have to do anything to the partition table if it looks ok.,
but I think you mentioned that parted has managed to access the
device before...)
Regards,
Robert.