Re: Issue with mounting USB-2 flash-drives on Red Hat 6

On Jun 17, 10:50 pm, sdavmor <sdav...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 06/16/2010 10:36 AM, Frank Winans wrote:





"Ross Ferris" wrote
I assume that the people with these systems probably use PC
workstations? We have used USB backup for our users for years
.... we simply plug the USB drive into a WINDOWS PC, they copy
backup from a share on the Linux machine (with a .BAT on the
desktop more often than not) and the job is done in a minute or
2 ... EASY AS!!

A FETCHBU.BAT to pull the /u/pickbu.bz2   file to c:\pickbu.bz2
might be @echo off title fetchbu @rem that puts a title on this
dos window frame on your desktop net   use   j:
\\RedhatBox\readonly attrib    -r    -s    c:\pickbu.bz2 copy   /b
/y j:\u\pickbu.bz2   c:\pickbu.bz2 net   use    /delete j:

You can omit  the  line    @echo   off      if you want to see
each command on screen as it runs. The  title   line     adjusts
the windows title bar of the command prompt window this batch file
is running in... Assumes your linux box has a windows box 'name'
of RedhatBox in windows network neighborhood alias 'computers near
me' list, and that linux samba is running and configured to allow
guest access to a share called 'readonly'  that is offering linux
/ directory. The attrib   line     and the  /y  of COPY  are
efforts to preclude any interruptions from windows to ask you 'are
you sure?' or  'readonly file exists already, access denied' or
whatever. I chose to use windows drive letter   J:     for the
mapped network drive here.

If you instead want to push the file from linux over onto a
windows disk share, //winguy/pub        as filename pickbu.bz2
there,   and that share lets windows userid  george with windows
password 'please'     have write access, then you could do the
command {smbclient is provided as part of samba  client   rpm}
smbclient -U  george      //winguy/pub   please       \ -c   'put
/u/pickbu.bz2   pickbu.bz2' You can verify your samba is playing
happily with the local windows print and file sharing members by
doing      smbclient  -L  localhost    |  more and noting it lists
the other winboxes on the lan.  Sadly modern windows security is
often too advanced or adjusted too tightly for samba to work with,
esp. post-win2k, at least not without some major samba guru
consultant help.

Our nightly 'file-save (xy   in batch mode'  program  saves  to
pickbu1 on monday, etc but also does bzip2  -k    on it and
renames the pickbu1.bz2  as just  pickbu.bz2 --we get like 3.5 or
4.0    -- to --  one   compression rates typically.  Your older
redhat won't offer bzip2  / bunzip2,   but you should at least use
compress / uncompress, ought to get you at least 3:1 ... That
reduction is very welcomed if you're waiting on the batch file to
suck the file into windows on demand, instead of pushing it from
linux to a windows share during overnight processing. Your
overnight job should also check the pick return code from  the
SAVE   it does, and alert staff if it isn't good status.  Maybe
enhance the log-message    of   d3 to reflect that status code,
too...

I'm deeply skeptical that a system bought new just 2 years ago
will support redhat 6.x since our vendors had by then  been
offering us boxes that do not support windows98 installs, for
example, and istr that was the vintage of windows when redhat 6.x
releases came out. Also, if these are refurbed older motherboards,
you might find the bios won't support ide hard disks over 2.1 gigs,
or 32 gigs, for example,  or enough ram to support rhel 4 or 5, so
get a proof-of-concept site loaded up before commiting to upgrade
all your sites to modern redhat.

The boxes are all off-the-shelf Compaqs. Models SR5605F, SR5615F and a
couple of other models that escape me. But all purchased within the
last 2 years. The exception being one Celeron-processor Compaq that is
almost 3 years old. It comes due for scheduled replacement in August.
Those two model numbers happen to be on my workbench right now which
is now I can report what they are. 2gb DDR-2 with 512mb assigned to
D3. Either Athlon LE1640, AMD 64 3800, AMD 64 4800, 5000, 5200 or 5600
processors. We put a dumb Realtek RTL8192 LAN card in for standardized
convenience (disabling the on board LAN) and add a Lava Industries PCI
slot parallel port card for the Okidata printer. All the systems are
running Red Hat 6.1 or 6.2 and D3 Linux 7.2.0. I installed them
myself. Other than this recent A/C failure-induced system crash
nothing ever goes wrong, they run fast, the 10 year old dbms serves
their data reliably, etc.

Sorry dunno what modules were around back at redhat6.x offhand,
but it seems at least as far back as redhat 9 the kernel module
for using usb flash drives ('thumb drives') was usb-storage
{googled to linux   usb   flash   drive   ,  chose the response
onwww.ExtremeTech.com}

and is still usb-storage  even today, though in modern linux you'd
let the linux   autofs service run and it would detect the drive
when you plug it in, and mount it as  /media/foo where model of
drive is foo. usb-storage provides a simulated scsi drive { see
dmesg  | more }  for you to fdisk/dd  / mount / whatever.

I tested an 8 year old 2.4.x kernel last night. The servers I have in
place are running 2.2.14. The USB flash-drives are seen, can be
mounted writable and the psuedo-tapes can be copied onto the
flash-drives. Looking back it seems the big leap forward in terms of
ease of dealing with USB in the linux kernel came code at the 2.2.18
kernel. This is what was in the 2.4.x series kernels. So I'm going try
one of my testbed machines with a kernel upgrade and see how it goes.

If you are using old refurbed motherboards, you might find the usb
slots are hardware version 1.1 instead of modern 2.0 -- your drive
may not work, or may be limited to 32mb.   I don't know of any
command in linux that will confirm / deny your usb hardware
version, sorry.

No refurbished mobos. Just the ones that come in the machines that are
rolled out vanilla by Compaq into Fry's etc. All front and back USB
slots are 2.0 and accessible (writable) using a 2.4.x kernel.

Test all the usb slots, as on many computers one or more of the
usb slots are different than the others -- maybe you should tape
shut a single such retarded usb slot of your  server before you
ship it to client...

You can either treat that flash drive as an ide drive with
partition table, partions etc or  treat it as a biiiig floppy if
doing a dd copy of a bootable  iso   file.  Ymmv on whether your
bios will even consider booting off it as a big floppy, though.
Winboxes can also fdisk/format the usb flashdrive, and you can
rename the volume label that  linux reads during automounting, to
make it use an alternate /media/foo3   folder for the mount of
that particular specimen. When done with it you could issue the
umount /media/foo     before pulling it out of usb port.

Thanks for the food for thought. We're going to treat the flash-drives
as an idle disk drive for now to be mounted at boot time right befor
D3 stars up; unmounted/remounted when swapped-out each week. Though
that might change once we see it in production use.

Instead of using ftp to push a copy of pickbu off of linux,
consider using  scp   {cp command but using the nice encrypted ssh
protocol} if you can arrange a partner ssh server at the other end
of the link.   Erm, in  the windows world, the  ssh client  suite
putty calls this pscp.exe, if you're out in the field and want to
suck a file down from the linux server.<<  did redhat 6.x even
have ssh yet?  I forget>>    If no linux server available out in
the field to accept your scp from the local d3/linux box, consider
loading a winbox up with   cygwin and include the optional
software parts that provide an ssh server on that winbox.  Note
cygwin can be a pesky nuisance to administer, though it is a free
download.

Thanks. Lots of good stuff there. We already use SCP for moving data
instead of FTP (disabled). It's just a question of automating it.
Wasn't an issue until now. But now it is. And yes, ssh was all there
in 6.x RH. We use it instead of telnet (disabled) for external
accessing of the in-store servers.
--
Cheers, SDM -- a 21st Century Schizoid Man
Systems Theory project website:http://systemstheory.net
find us on MySpace, GarageBand, Reverb Nation, Last FM, CDBaby
free MP3s of Systems Theory, Mike Dickson & Greg Amov music athttp://mikedickson.org.uk- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

If the USB drives have Leonard Cohen doing "So Long Marrianne" on them
they last longer - right?
.

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