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Unable to automount ext3 formated usb disk

I have a NAS from WD that runs some stripped down flavor of linux. The NAS has one USB port at the back which can be used to expand the storage. If I plug in an external disk formated in either NTFS or HFS+ then the system automatically mounts the disk and shares it over samba. If I plug in a disk that is formated in ext3, the disk is recognized but that's about it. It doesn't mount or get shared or anything. I have tried asking WD about this and I have tried asking google. But after two days of searching I am turning here for some more expert advice.

Here is what I've managed to figure out so far.

If I check dmesg before and after plugging in the ext3 usb disk I have found out that these lines are added to the log:

Code:

usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using oxnas-ehci and address 2

usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

usb-storage: device found at 2

usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access    WD      20EADS External  1.75 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029168 512-byte hardware sectors (2000399 MB)

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 3907029168 512-byte hardware sectors (2000399 MB)

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

 sdb: sdb1

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

usb-storage: device scan complete

oxnas_wd810_leds_state state=1

ufsd: failed to mount sdb1

EXT3-fs: Unrecognized mount option "gid=1000" or missing value

I have tried googleing those last two lines but I haven't found any info that I can make any sense of.

If I run the command "mount -a" I get the following messages from the shell: "mount: Cannot read /etc/fstab: No such file or directory"

Hover I am able to mount the ext3 disk manually. First I get this info from fdisk

Code:

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes



  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System

/dev/sdb1              1 18446744073709527469 18446744073515580000  83  Linux

And then I run these two commands:

Code:

[root@NAS01 /]# mkdir /shares/external/usb1

[root@NAS01 /]# mount /dev/sdb1 /shares/external/usb1

This makes the usb disk visible in the shell, but since this is a NAS, it is kinda useless as long as it doesn't show up in samba.

Since I'm pretty new to linux I don't know what to try next so I'm hoping for some advice as to what I can do to make the ext3 usb disk automount.

Quote:

And then I run these two commands:
Code:

[root@NAS01 /]# mkdir /shares/external/usb1
[root@NAS01 /]# mount /dev/sdb1 /shares/external/usb1

This makes the usb disk visible in the shell, but since this is a NAS, it is kinda useless as long as it doesn't show up in samba.

I'm not quite sure what you mean "it doesn't show up in samba". It seems that the flavor of Linux on the NAS doesn't automatically mount an external USB drive. The way in which you mounted it above is correct.

To persist it being mounted (in the case of a shutdown/reboot), add the following line to you4 /etc/fstab on the NAS:

Code:

/dev/sdb1 /shares/external/usb1 ext3 defaults 0 0

Now to add that its mounted; you need to probably modify your smb.conf in order to share that particular directory (/shares/external/usb1) and restart samba.

Well, the thing is that if I plug in an NTFS or HFS+ usb disk the NAS 100% automatically mounts the disk and shares it over samba without me having to do anything. I would like this same functionality for my ext3 disk. I wasn't expecting the ext3 disk to show up in samaba when I mounted it manually, but there is obviously some script that does all this for drives with other filesystems.

Secondly, I don't actually have a fstab file on my system. Should I create one and input the info you provided? What I have noticed is that the system automatically deletes the /external/ folder every time the system reboots. Would that affect the info that is written in fstab?

Hi

Can you provide the exact make/model of your NAS?

Quote:

Secondly, I don't actually have a fstab file on my system. Should I create one and input the info you provided? What I have noticed is that the system automatically deletes the /external/ folder every time the system reboots. Would that affect the info that is written in fstab?

No don't do this - sounds a bit strange that the OS doesn't have /etc/fstab but perhaps its some custom flavour I haven't heard of.

The NAS I have is a WesternDigital MyBook World Edition II White Light. It has one 2TB internal disk. It runs on a quite low powered arm processor. I have root access to it through ssh and there is a optware feed with packages specifically compiled for it so there is quite a bit of functionality there.

Is there a way to identify which script successfully mounts and shares NTFS and HFS+ disks? Maybe if I could find that script and take a look at it we could identify why it's not working for ext3 disks?

According to another source it is possible to successfully run the mount script on an ext3 drive if you specify ext3 as the filesystem. Unfortunately the source doesn't say which script this is nor how you specify it with ext3. Any thoughts on this?