GPT USB disk not automatically mounting; not accessible to TellyIF after manual mounting

cdmackay

cdmackay

Active Member
hi all, apologies if this is an FAQ: I searched both here, and in the CF wiki, and found many related posts, but couldn't find answers to the following; apols if I missed them.

My friend has a 2TB external USB drive. It has a GPT partition table, with a single partition, with an ext3 filesystem on it.

He reports that it does not get mounted automatically; however a similar disk with an MBR partition table does get automatically mounted (as /media/drive1).

The CF Release Notes for v3.10 say:
  • Add support for automatically mounting GPT disks connected via USB;
so this seems surprising. Should my friend expect his GPT disk to mount automatically, or is that only under certain conditions. Should he perhaps try the virtual-disk2 pkg, or is that unrelated?

He can get it to mount, via the blue pointer icon, as /media/gpt-drive1, and can then interact with it happily via the WebIF. However, he still can't access it via the TellyIF USB Storage area. Is that expected, e.g. the TellyIF doesn't look for /media/gpt-drive1? I wondered about making /media/drive1 a symlink to the latter, but that may break MBR disks; we've yet to try that.

He could of course remake the disk with an MBR partition table, since it is only 2TB, but it has data on it that will need to be preserved, so that's a last resort.

Any comments on what functionality should be expected, for GPT/ext3 USB disks would be much appreciated, thank you. e.g. automatic mounting, TellyIF accessible, etc. Thanks very much!

Web interface version: 1.4.9
Custom firmware version: 3.13 (build 4028)
Humax Version: 1.03.12 (kernel HDR_CFW_3.13)
 
IIRC the Humax settop program (which is in charge of mounting disks) doesn't know about GPT, so the mounting is done by the CF's device discovery hook routine. As you observe, the mount-point looks like /media/gpt-drive1 and isn't directly accessible from the HDR's on-screen file browser (HD's browser is rooted at the device rather than the video partition). virtual-disk2 may well be the answer.
 
hi, thanks very much for the reply.

Sorry to be slow; are you saying that the GPT disk indeed ought to be mounted automatically, on insertion, via the discovery hook? Or merely that the insertion hook allows the CF to show the external disk icon, allowing for manual mounting when it is clicked? thanks!
 
Installing the virtual-disk2 package might then allow standard firmware operations to "see" the external GPT disk.
 
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