How to: Mount a USB drive on your Untangle Server

[sky-knight]

This tutorial assumes you know how to get into a terminal, either SSH or the local console doesn't matter.

Ok, first the hard part... identifying the device flag for the USB drive. I Plug in my USB drive to the Untangle server, then run the following command.

dmesg

That command will spew a pile of output, at the very end will be a block of text similar to the following.

[2526565.234406] usb 4-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[2526565.382407] usb 4-1: not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub
[2526565.421656] usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[2526565.425657] scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[2526565.538657] usb-storage: device found at 2
[2526565.538657] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[2526565.425657] usb 4-1: New USB device found, idVendor=05dc, idProduct=a701
[2526565.425657] usb 4-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[2526565.425657] usb 4-1: Product: JD FIREFLY
[2526565.425657] usb 4-1: Manufacturer: LEXAR
[2526565.425657] usb 4-1: SerialNumber: 1069A706011107281207
[2526572.090503] usb-storage: device scan complete
[2526572.101753] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access LEXAR JD FIREFLY 1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[2526572.132352] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3932160 512-byte hardware sectors (2013 MB)
[2526572.135350] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[2526572.135355] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[2526572.135357] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[2526572.147350] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3932160 512-byte hardware sectors (2013 MB)
[2526572.150351] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[2526572.150356] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[2526572.150358] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[2526572.150747] sdb: sdb1
[2526572.197574] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[2526572.199951] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

You'll notice the third from the last line.

[2526572.150747] sdb: sdb1

This means my thumb drive is attached to the sdb device flag, and it has 1 partition represented by sdb1

Now that I know where the device flag is I can mount the thumb drive with the following command.

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

From this point the /mnt directory is now my thumb drive, and I can copy files to and from it as if it was just another folder in the system.

When I'm done, before I unplug the device I must unmount the filesystem to ensure things are written properly and I don't corrupt the file system on the thumb drive.

First I make sure I'm not still in /mnt

cd /
umount /mnt

Now I can yank my USB drive out and move on with my day.

[alhadi]

how about using that usb drive lets say 1 TB WD for network backup purpose?

any ideas on that

[sky-knight]

This process can be used to mount any USB storage device. Mounting network storage is a bit different, and more than likely will need samba installed before it's over.

[WebFooL]

I have a other solution.
Sry for the thread hijack Sky-knight.

Edit "/etc/apt/sources.list" (uncomment the debian sources)
Then run "apt-get update"
Now install usbmount (http://usbmount.alioth.debian.org/)
By running "apt-get install usbmount"
After the installation is done edit "/etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf"
Change values to:

FILESYSTEMS="ext3 ext2 vfat"
MOUNTOPTIONS="noexec,nodev,noatime"
FS_MOUNTOPTIONS="-fstype=vfat,umask=000"

Now edit your sources.list back to normal.
and run "apt-get update".

Now try attaching a usb memory.
The first device should get /media/usb0/

And again sry for the hijack.

[joemailey]

Don't mean to take this off track but it seems like a good place to ask this question.

Using the reporting script that has been provided for 7.x.x would it be possible to schedule a back up of the reports to a USB drive attached to Untangle server?

As I would like to keep the reports longer than 30days.

[WebFooL]

The only thing i can think of is adding a cron job that runs:

/usr/share/untangle/bin/backup-ut/ /path/to/usb/

But Sky-knight might have another solution. (or a other member for that reason)

[sky-knight]

Yeah a cron job to run the backup script and copy the backup from the usual location to the USB drive should be simple enough.

And Webfool, you know I don't go around installing stuff to get things done... that's how people break on upgrade.

[WebFooL]

Yes, i know.. and every time I change the source.list a bit of me dies.

[alhadi]

My company needs a backup server like a NAS solution but then again i dont have a spare pc

can untangle help me to backup the company files ?

[pirateghost]

Originally Posted by alhadi

My company needs a backup server like a NAS solution but then again i dont have a spare pc

can untangle help me to backup the company files ?

lets keep it simple by saying, NO.

untangle is NOT a NAS device. there are talks of adding a NAS-like module, but not at this time.

if your company doesnt have a backup solution and you are not willing to spend the money, ask yourself this, "how much will the downtime of losing data cost the company and what would happen if EVERYTHING was lost in a fire tonight?"

if it isnt you writing the checks, then ask the person writing them...how much is their data worth?