USB ON GENTOO

I decided Fisher (the MapServer server at work) needed USB support for backup purposes, and after some degree of hassle, it now appears to be working. Here’s what I did (note that this is almost certainly not a minimal configuration, but it did work):

• Kernel Configuration (Linux 2.6.9)
  • General Setup / Support for hot-pluggable devices
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / Support for Host-side USB
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / USB Device Filesystem
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / EHCI HCD (USB 2.0) support, with Full speed ISO transactions and Root Hub Transaction Translators
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / OHCI HCD Support
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / UHCI HCD (most Intel and VIA) support
  • Device Drivers / USB Support / USB Mass Storage Support
  • File systems / DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems / VFAT (windows-95) support
  • File systems / DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems / NTFS file system support
  • File systems / Miscellaneous Filesystems / Apple Extended HFS file system support
• emerge hotplug

Then I recompiled the kernel and rebooted (things then went to hell for unrelated reasons, most of them my fault, and were subsequently fixed, after much hair pulling). Finally, with some help from the friendly folks in the Gentoo LJ community, I tailed /var/log/messages (could have also used dmesg), plugged in a USB drive, saw where it was being listed under /dev, mounted it, and all was well. Yay. Now I just need to get an automounting script up and running…