HD-FOX CF: Prepare External Drive

[Black Hole]

The HD-FOX CF offers the ability to prepare an external drive to host the packages etc, on the Maintenance Mode menu (Telnet, or via the web browser interface). The drive needs to be Ext3 or Ext2; the HD-FOX menus can format a drive to Ext3, but Ext2 is more appropriate for solid-state drives (particularly Flash rather than SSD).

I had cause to use this facility yesterday, but thought nothing was happening because there was no progress display. I gave up and formatted the UPD on my Linux machine, where it took ages so maybe I gave up too early on the HD-FOX.

Is there be a progress indicator, and my flakey networking wasn't displaying it (I'm also testing out a different nano-router)?

If there isn't, perhaps there should be.

 

[prpr]

There is a -q parameter on the command, which shuts it up. There isn't on the equivalent operations when converting a (HDR internal) disk to GPT.
Maybe that parameter should be removed in the next firmware build.
In the meantime, you could always install the tmenu package and then edit /mod/boot/2/tmenu line 212 which says:
mkfs.ext2 -m 0 -O sparse_super -q $cdev || return
to remove the -q. You may also wish to add -T largefile which will speed up both the formatting and e2fsck time, should you ever have cause to run it.
The likelihood of running out of inodes is small unless you plan on storing millions of small files on it.

 

[Black Hole]

the HD-FOX menus can format a drive to Ext3

Actually, I'm not sure about this. The menu option is there, but I don't seem to be able to access it in a meaningful way.

 

[prpr]

What menu option? You at least need to provide some context and version numbers. I guess you are talking about /bin/tmenu ?

 

[Black Hole]

'Course not Malcolm! The context exists in the thread, but for clarity: Menu >> Settings >> System >> Data Storage.

 

[prpr]

I don't know what you're on about. There is no context as you describe, and this thread started with something related to the CF (in the CF section).

 

[Black Hole]

I take it you never bother with the Standard Interface any more!

 

[prpr]

I certainly do, but I fail to see the relevance to any of the preceding posts, and it's been quite a while since I looked at the mentioned menu. Not that there's anything that can be done about whatever is wrong with it anyway.