External USB Drive¶

A goog resource is here

Setup¶

First connect the drive and find it:

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 15.9 GB, 15931539456 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 486192 cylinders, total 31116288 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000981cb

        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/mmcblk0p1            8192      122879       57344    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2          122880    31116287    15496704   83  Linux

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders, total 1250263728 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1  1250263727   625131863+  ee  GPT

Make a mount point and mount and/or unmount the drive.

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo mkdir /mnt/usbdrive
pi@calculon ~ $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
pi@calculon ~ $ sudo umount /dev/sda1

Formatting Disk¶

Starting with a USB hard drive 640GB formated in OSX’s HSF+, I needed to change it to ext4:

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo parted /dev/sda
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) p
Model: Maxtor OneTouch (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 640GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start  End  Size  File system  Name  Flags

(parted) mkpart primary ext4 1 640000
(parted) p
Model: Maxtor OneTouch (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 640GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name     Flags
 1      1049kB  640GB  640GB               primary

(parted) quit
Information: You may need to update /etc/fstab.

Note in the mkpart line, the start and stop locations are in MB.

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 -L Calculon
mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
Filesystem label=Calculon
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
39067648 inodes, 156249856 blocks
7812492 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
4769 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
    32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
    4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
    102400000

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

Now mount the drive and double check it:

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive
pi@calculon ~ $ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs           15G  3.7G   11G  27% /
/dev/root        15G  3.7G   11G  27% /
devtmpfs        112M     0  112M   0% /dev
tmpfs            24M  240K   23M   2% /run
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs            47M     0   47M   0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1   56M  9.8M   47M  18% /boot
/dev/sda1       587G   70M  557G   1% /mnt/usbdrive

Fix permissions:

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo chown pi:pi /mnt/usbdrive
pi@calculon ~ $ sudo chmod 777 /mnt/usbdrive
pi@calculon ~ $ sudo ls /mnt/usbdrive -alh
total 24K
drwxrwxrwx 3 pi   pi   4.0K Dec 14 20:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4.0K Dec 14 18:24 ..
drwx------ 2 root root  16K Dec 14 20:45 lost+found

Automounting¶

Add the following to fstab so it mounts on boot.

sudo nano /etc/fstab
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdisk auto defaults,user 0 1

This sets the file system to auto and user enables write permissions for all users. The 0 is for debugging and 1 is for a file system check at boot. You can test this out by:

sudo mount -a

Swap Partition on Hard Drive¶

Don’t ever make a swap partition on the sd card ... it is too slow and will reduce the card’s life span.

Create a partition for swap on say /dev/sda2 following the method above, then exit parted.
Use mkswap /dev/sda2 to set it up.
Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line: /dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0
Get rid of RPi’s file base swap by removing the packages: sudo apt-get remove dphy-swapfile
Make sure swap is working: swapon -s

pi@calculon ~ $ swapon -s Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/sda2 partition 4295676 0 -1

Making available to OSX¶

Make the following changes to the config file, adding the drive to netatalk.

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo pico /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default
# The line below sets some DEFAULT, starting with Netatalk 2.1.
:DEFAULT: options:upriv,usedots

# By default all users have access to their home directories.
~/          "Home Directory"
/mnt/usbdrive

# End of File

There are also options to enable Time Machine support (see tm).

Then restart netatalk:

pi@calculon ~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/netatalk stop
Stopping Netatalk Daemons: afpd cnid_metad papd timelord atalkd.
pi@calculon ~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/netatalk start
Starting Netatalk services (this will take a while):  cnid_metad afpd.