[SOLVED] Unable to mount ext3 / NTFS / XFS on USB on WZR-600DHP

[prasad]

I have a new WZR-600DHP running DD-WRT v24SP2-MULTI (11/04/12) std

and I want to connect an external hard drive (formatted as ext3) to use as NAS with it.

It is not working and I get following errors:

 

Disk Info --- /dev/sda
Block device, size 931.5 GiB (1000204136448 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 116.4 GiB (124998778880 bytes, 244138240 sectors from 256)
Type 0x83 (Linux)
First 897 KiB are blank
Partition 2: 25.37 MiB (26607104 bytes, 51967 sectors from 244138496)
Type 0x82 (Linux swap / Solaris)
Blank disk/medium
Status: Not mounted - Unsupported file system or disk not formated

 

My Questions:

 

1) Why does this ext3 partition not get mounted automatically ? I was able to manually do this (described below)

 

2) What do I need to do to make this change that I made manually, permanent ?

     I don't want to uncompress the firmware, modify start scripts and re-create the compressed firmware. The filesystem

     is mounted read-only so I could not modify scripts directly. It does not allow me to remount the filesystem read-write.

     The firmware modification may not work because I have read elsewhere that Buffalo hardware will not accept

     community firmware (not signed by Buffalo private/secret key)

 

3) Does "std" the firmware revision 'DD-WRT v24SP2-MULTI (11/04/12) std'  mean I am running user friendly firmware

     or "professional" firmware ? Is there a way to tell them apart from the web gui / via ssh shell prompt / any other technique ?

 

Tried to look for solutions - Here is what I found by googling:

 

On DD-WRT wiki people talk about a check-button to enable ext3 support, but I don't see this

option on the GUI

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Samba3

 

On forums people mention that this option is removed since 16214 and that enabling

USB support automatically should enable ext3 support

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=540240

However, this does not seem to work. I still get the above errors:

 

Actually, the ext3 kernel module and other required kernel modules are there

in the firmware, and I was able to mount the ext3 partition manually using the technique I came across in

on the dd-wrt wiki

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Mounting_USB_drive_without_located_onboard_fs_modules

 

After reading the above dd-wrt wiki article, I tried the following and was able to see the ext3 partition and read/write to it from the other

computers connected on the network:

 

- ssh into the router

- run following commands from shell prompt

  insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/jbd/jbd.ko

  insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/mbcache.ko

  insmod /lib/modules/3.2.38/kernel/fs/ext3/ext3.ko

  mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt

 

 

 

 

[prasad]

NTFS and XFS too don't work. Buffalo Support engineers, please respond. How am

I supposed to use NAS functionality with this router ?

 

--- /dev/sda
Block device, size 931.5 GiB (1000204136448 bytes)
DOS/MBR partition map
Partition 1: 116.4 GiB (125025385984 bytes, 244190207 sectors from 256)
Type 0x07 (HPFS/NTFS)
Status: Not mounted - Unsupported file system or disk not formated

--- /dev/sda
Block device, size 931.5 GiB (1000204136448 bytes)
XFS file system, version 4
Volume name ""
UUID 464BABEA-4911-4C7E-845C-AD1B832BA4DC (DCE, v4)
Volume size 931.5 GiB (1000204136448 bytes, 244190463 blocks of 4 KiB)
Status: Not mounted

[prasad]

Here is my semi-automated solution based on this
article I came across on lifehacker. Somehow
the nvram set/get command did not work on the firmware
so I could not make these changes permanent :(

 

http://lifehacker.com/5756233/get-more-out-of-your-dd+wrt-router-with-an-external-drive

 

1. I entered the following commands in the
Administration->Commands window and saved
them by clicking the "Save Custom Script"
button

insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/jbd/jbd.ko;
insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/mbcache.ko;
insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/ext3/ext3.ko;
mount -t ext3 -o noatime /dev/sda1 /mnt

 

2. When the router is rebooted, I run these set of commands

 

3. I have copied all the stuff on the squashfs directory to my external ext3 drive and
have made a mount.sh script which mounts everything
(including the directories I want to share for
Videos, Music etc on my home network) - I run this manually once the router starts

so basically two scripts to run after router reboots
by clicking on the Administration->Command button

(two button clicks) and I have a hackable router that can serve files
to my home network from an ext3 formatted external HDD via USB

 

It sure would be nice to make this change permanent via nvram set or similar. If anyone knows how to
do this please let me know. Thanks very much.

---- my mount.sh below ---
#!/bin/sh

mount --bind /mnt/opt/ /opt/
mount --bind /mnt/jffs/ /jffs/
mount --bind /mnt/usr/local/ /usr/local/
cat /mnt/etc/group.d/* > /mnt/etc/group
cat /mnt/etc/passwd.d/* > /mnt/etc/passwd
mount --bind /mnt/etc/ /etc/

mkdir /tmp/Music
mkdir /tmp/Videos
mkdir /tmp/TV-Shows
mkdir /tmp/Movies
mkdir /tmp/Photos

mount --bind /mnt/media/Music /tmp/Music/
mount --bind /mnt/media/Videos /tmp/Videos/
mount --bind /mnt/media/TV-Shows /tmp/TV-Shows/
mount --bind /mnt/media/Movies /tmp/Movies/
mount --bind /mnt/media/Photos /tmp/Photos/
~
~
~

 

[prasad]

Just found that the Web GUI on the Buffalo professional firmware does allow users to set scripts that will get run
at startup - and also found that the DD-WRT v24SP2-MULTI (11/04/12) std is the "professional" firmware.

The startup commands can be saved using Administration->Commands->Save Startup

(you can't set those by nvram set, but can set them via the GUI) Now my startup script looks like the following:

 

insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/jbd/jbd.ko;
insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/mbcache.ko;
insmod /lib/modules/3.2.28/kernel/fs/ext3/ext3.ko;
sleep 10
mount -t ext3 -o noatime /dev/sda1 /mnt
/mnt/mount.sh

 

The ext3 filesystem on the USB drive gets mounted using this startup and I can access it from the network!