Handeling removable disks under ESATA
to mount a disk
power disk up and type 'dmesg' to see what device name the computer chose. You should see something like this at the bottom of the list: (NOTE: it may take a little while before the disk is recognized!!)
. . . [1624926.943952] usb 2-1: Product: STORE N GO [1624926.943954] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Verbatim [1624926.943956] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 07A3130929761542 [1624926.944802] scsi22 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0 [1624927.978847] scsi 22:0:0:0: Direct-Access Verbatim STORE N GO 5.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS [1624927.983253] sd 22:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0 [1624928.496834] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] 7827456 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00 GB/3.73 GiB) [1624928.498952] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Write Protect is off [1624928.498955] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Mode Sense: 03 41 00 00 [1624928.501080] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page present [1624928.501084] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through [1624928.508574] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page present [1624928.508577] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through [1624928.530109] sdd: sdd1 [1624928.535695] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] No Caching mode page present [1624928.535698] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Assuming drive cache: write through [1624928.535701] sd 22:0:0:0: [sdd] Attached SCSI removable disk [1624928.869338] SELinux: initialized (dev sdd1, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts [1625347.268862] SELinux: initialized (dev sdd1, type vfat), uses genfs_contexts
or use
lsblk
to see what disks are there
then do
sudo e2label /dev/sdd1
to see if the disk has an identifying label (see how to give a partition an identifying label below); which you can then use as
mkdir ~/esata/`sudo e2label /dev/sdd1` sudo /bin/mount /dev/sdd1 ~/esata/`sudo e2label /dev/sdd1` lsblk df | grep `sudo e2label /dev/sdd1`
to unmount the disk again
sync;sync;sync sudo /bin/umount /dev/sdd1
If you cannot unmount the disk, make sure you (or someone else) have not cd'ed to the disk in some window somewhere. Sometimes 'lsof | grep cwd' is useful in order to reveal who is cd'ed to the disk
to format a disk
WARNING: do not format the wrong disk, our you could get into big trouble!! If you are uncertain about how to format a disk, it is best to ask for help.
follow the procedure under 'to mount a disk:' to find the device name. Here we will assume '/dev/sdd'
partition the disk using fdisk:
sudo /sbin/fdisk /dev/sdd
typically, for a new disk, you would simply say:
p n p 1 hit return for default hit return for default w
this will create the partition '/dev/sdd1' which we will now impose a linux EXT4 file system on as
sudo /sbin/mkfs.ext4 -m 0 /dev/sdd1
to be able to write to the 5% of the disk that is normally reserved for root. For a data disk this is OK, but for a system disk it is a bad idea.
On some machines this takes a long time (e.g., scientific linux) , on others it is very fast (e.g., fedora 15)
It is a good idea to give the disk a UNIQUE label that makes sense to you, maybe just the date and a serial character:
sudo /sbin/e2label /dev/sdd1 20120611a
With this label, if this disk is mounted automatically as a usb disk, it will then come up as /media/20120611a
You can now mount the disk using the instructions under 'to mount a disk:'
sudo /bin/mount /dev/sdd1 ~/data1
for other than root to be able to write to the disk, do this
sudo mkdir ~/data1/user sudo chmod a+rwx ~/data1/user
you should now see something like this
ls -l ~/data1 total 20 drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Jun 11 11:04 lost+found/ drwxrwxrwx. 2 root root 4096 Jun 11 11:30 user/
and anyone can write to '~/data1/user'. now unmount again as
sudo /bin/umount /dev/sdd1
setting up sudo
reminder for system managers regarding how sudo is set up for the above procedures to work
visudo
Cmnd_Alias ESATAFORMAT = /sbin/e2label, /sbin/fdisk, /sbin/mkfs.ext4, /bin/mkdir, /bin/chmod gamuser ALL=ESATAFORMAT dgs ALL=ESATAFORMAT Cmnd_Alias ESATAMOUNT = /bin/mount, /bin/umount gamuser ALL=ESATAMOUNT dgs ALL=ESATAMOUNT
your system manager may or may not be friendly enough to let you do this...