Can't Mount FAT32 USB

[SoonerLater]

I am trying to mount a 1.5 tb USB external (2.5") drive. I have followed the instructions found at http://mikebeach.org/2013/02/27/mounting-a-usb-fat32-formatted-disk-in-freenas-8/ as best as I can. I'll explain where I got off track and maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

1. Open Shell in the WebGUI interface.

2. Plug in desired USB drive.

3. Look at the recent log to see how the system picked it up. In my case it was as /dev/da1 (note: this is "da numeral one" not "dal").

4. Give command ls -l /dev/da1* in shell and note response. In my case the drive is da1s1 (note: this is "da numeral one s numeral one").

5. cd /mnt

6. sudo su

7. mkdir usb

8. mount_msdosfs /dev/da1s1 usb1

This where I get off track. I get an error message: "No such file or directory."

I want to mount this FAT32 usb drive so that I can copy about 1.3 tb of files to the NAS without having to route all of the traffice through a workstation as an intermediary. If anyone can help me do that, I would be very grateful.

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks for trying to solve it yourself. Most people just post asking how to do it without trying to figure it out for yourself.

I think step 8 should be

mount_msdosfs /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb

If you want it to be /mnt/usb1 then you need to change step 7 to say "mkdir usb1".

 

[SoonerLater]

Thanks for trying to solve it yourself. Most people just post asking how to do it without trying to figure it out for yourself.

I think step 8 should be

mount_msdosfs /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb

If you want it to be /mnt/usb1 then you need to change step 7 to say "mkdir usb1".

I noticed the inconsistency, but I thought it was just another of the 10 million thinks about BSD and Linux that baffle me. I was quoting verbatim the steps given at www.mikebeach.org. It didn't occur to me that there was a typo in their guide.

That being said... I have now done (separately) mkdir usb1 and mkdir usb. When I try mount_msdosfs /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb or mount_msdosfs /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb1 I get "invalid argument"

Has the procedure for mounting a USB volume changed recently? I'm new to FreeNAS, but it occurs to me that the guide I was trying to follow could be out of date.

 

[cyberjock]

Has the procedure for mounting a USB volume changed recently? I'm new to FreeNAS, but it occurs to me that the guide I was trying to follow could be out of date.

When you ran the command mkdir usb1 and mkdir usb did you run it after you typed cd /mnt? I would definitely be checking the commands you are running to make sure they pass a sanity check to you. It would suck to blindly follow some guide and find out the hard way you just wiped the partition with a typo.

With each version increase (7->8, 8->9, etc) some tools are combined, some are removed, etc. So it is important that you verify that the commands you are running and the guide you are following is for your version of FreeBSD. Then, because FreeNAS is a stripped down version of FreeBSD, some commands aren't available because those packages don't exist.

Maybe try this: http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?6403-Help-Mounting-FAT32-USB-Drive

I don't have access to my FreeBSD machine, but you should be able to Google around and find someone that has used the commands in FreeNAS(8.x.x or FreeBSD 8.3).

 

[SoonerLater]

When I run these two commands:

Code:

cd /mnt
ls -l

I get these results:

Code:

[root@louise] /mnt# ls -l
total 20
drwxrwxr-x   6 root  wheel     512 May  4 16:59 ./
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel     512 Apr 10 17:28 ../
drwxrwxr-x   2 root  operator  512 May  2 11:52 .snap/
drwxr-xr-x   5 root  wheel       5 May  4 09:52 Buffy3/
-rw-rw-r--   1 root  wheel       5 Apr 10 17:27 md_size
drwxrwxr-x   2 root  wheel     512 May  4 10:54 usb/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 May  4 16:58 usb1/

Is there a clue here?

 

[cyberjock]

Nope. The command you are running with mount_msdosfs must be incorrect.

Did you look at the link? Maybe you should add an a to the command.. /dev/da1s1a? Maybe add the -o large?

I'd try to do it myself, but I don't have a FreeBSD machine handy.

Considering how much work you are having to put into this maybe it would be faster to just copy it over the network from Windows.. LOL.

Edit: Here's the manpage if you still want to figure it out yourself... http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mount_msdosfs&sektion=8