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Ciego
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 226
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 Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:37 am Post subject: HowTo: Share a hard drive between Linux and the XMB |
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HowTo: Share a Hard Drive Between Linux and the XMB
This guide will help you to enable the use of an external hard drive from both the PS3 XMB and your Linux installation. You will need a USB hard drive of any size for this guide.
Make sure that your hard drive is plugged into your PS3. The first thing that you need to do is find out what device it is recognized as. Open a terminal ...
Try to locate your drive based on its size. (mine is /dev/sdf1 but it may be sdd1 for your drive or something similar)
If you still cannot figure out what your drive is, click Places>Computer and look for it there. If you find it try to double click it or view the properties to figure out what device it is. You can also try right clicking on the drive and select "eject" and find the device from the error message.
Now we ned to install some tools for dealing with vfat file systems since that is what the PS3 uses.
| Code: | | $ sudo apt-get install dosfstools |
Now we can create the filesystem on your hard drive. Please note that ALL data will be erased. (If your hard drive is already a fat32 file system then there is no need to do this step.) Substitute your hard drive device wherever you see "/dev/sdf1" from here on.
| Code: | | $ sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdf1 |
We will need to create an entry in our fstab file for this hard drive.
| Code: | | $ sudo nano /etc/fstab |
add the following line to the end of the file
| Code: | | /dev/sdf1 /media/PS3-Share vfat defaults,noauto,users 0 0 |
Now we will create the mount point where the hard drive will be mounted.
| Code: | | $ sudo mkdir /media/PS3-Share |
Now we need to add a command to our system that will be issued at startup. (We neeed to do this because of how the vfat file systems work ... it is a permissions issue. If you care to read more about it, check this out.
http://my.opera.com/lounge/forums/topic.dml?id=83440
Goto System>Preferences>Sessions
Select the "Startup Programs" tab then click the "Add" button and enter this command
Now the hard drive should be mounted automatically when you reboot. You should also be able to access it from the PS3 XMB. Please note that only certain file types are recognized from the PS3 XMB.
In order to mount it right now, issue the folowwing command ...
Now you have an easy way to share files between Ubuntu and the XMB.
Last edited by Ciego on Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Eidan
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Thank you! I've been wanting to do this for a while. My disk was already fat32 formatted but I can confirm the howto works from there  |
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Ciego
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 226
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joel1234567
Joined: 16 Feb 2007
Posts: 20
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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Ciego- thanks for the tutorial. I ran through these steps and all was well. The only thing I changed was that I didn't add the mount command to the startup apps- seems to work fine without it.
I have verified that my drive works well from Linux on my ps3 and also from Windows. However, it seems that the XMB doesn't recognize the drive. It doesnt ever show up, and I can't access any of the data.
Have you successfully accessed your external HDD data from the XMB? How big is your drive? What brand? |
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Ciego
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 226
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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Yes ... I can access them from the XMB. I tried it with a 512MB LExar jump drive and a 160GB Western Digital MyBook.
You must make sure that the drive is formatted with a fat32 filesystem ... it should work then. |
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joel1234567
Joined: 16 Feb 2007
Posts: 20
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for the info.
Yesterday I bought a 320G Seagate "FreeAgent" drive. For some reason the XMB didnt recognize it. It was preloaded with NTFS, but I converted it to FAT32 (verified this on Linux & Windows) using mkfs.vfat on ps3/linux. I was able to read/write to the drive everywhere except the XMB.
So- I just went back to the store and traded it for a MyBook 320G. Looks like the MyBook comes preloaded with FAT32. The MyBook works like a charm, straight outta the box. Awesome.
Unless I really messed something up, I guess some drives just aren't compatible. |
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joel1234567
Joined: 16 Feb 2007
Posts: 20
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:30 am Post subject: |
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| I just had to reinstall ubuntu, and was noticing that when I rebooted that my usb hdd was no longer showing up... One thing that I discovered- if, from the ubuntu desktop, you go to "System->Administration->Users and Groups", and then click on your username, and then click on "Properties"... You can then select the "User Priveleges" tab, and click on the "Access external storage devices automatically" button. If you do this, then any storage devices (hdd or memory stick) that get plugged in at any time will appear automatically (auto mounted) on the desktop as an icon. By doing this, you also dont need to make any modifications to the fstab file, the /mnt directory, or the startup apps. You just plug in a new device and it appears. By selecting this option, I think that you can basically just plug in an external usb drive (with the correct file system) and it magically appears in the /media directory. |
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l:x
Joined: 23 Mar 2007
Posts: 14
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:35 am Post subject: Filesize limit |
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One downside to using FAT32 is the limitation on the filesize of 4 GB.
Any idea if XMB supports either EXT2/3 or NTFS?
Greetings,
Niels R. |
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Ciego
Joined: 14 Feb 2007
Posts: 226
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| Posted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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| I tested this with EXT3 and the XMB would not recognize it and i would guess that EXT2 will also not be recognized.. I cannot verify NTFS though. |
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atreides
Joined: 29 Jun 2007
Posts: 437
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| Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| AFAIK only FAT and UDF are supported by the XMB. Both are supported by pretty much every OS out there. |
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Garoro
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 81
Location: Oceanside, CA
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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| atreides wrote: | | AFAIK only FAT and UDF are supported by the XMB. Both are supported by pretty much every OS out there. |
Has anyone tried any of this since the 2.1 XMB Firmware upgrade the other day?
They popped it out only a week after the previous. It was a lot smaller file as well. Maybe they fixed the chat while gaming thing everyone was complaining about, or maybe they did some things for us Linux folks...
It sure would be nice to have access to a file system with large file size support. FAT32 is pretty lame as file systems go these days. I also note that there is no "file management" type system in XMB. The directory hierarchy has to be as Sony likes and the files only show up under their respective media type icons. ie music, video, etc. |
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Garoro
Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 81
Location: Oceanside, CA
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| Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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| joel1234567 wrote: | Thanks for the info.
Yesterday I bought a 320G Seagate "FreeAgent" drive. For some reason the XMB didnt recognize it. It was preloaded with NTFS, but I converted it to FAT32 (verified this on Linux & Windows) using mkfs.vfat on ps3/linux. I was able to read/write to the drive everywhere except the XMB.
So- I just went back to the store and traded it for a MyBook 320G. Looks like the MyBook comes preloaded with FAT32. The MyBook works like a charm, straight outta the box. Awesome.
Unless I really messed something up, I guess some drives just aren't compatible. |
Both my 320GB and my 750GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro drives show up when I plug them directly into the SATA port on the PS3. I didn't check to see if they show up via the USB port. Niether one is FAT32. Both have the Sony encrypted FS on them, and one is for Sony PS3 only, and the other is 10MB Sony XMB, and the rest is for Linux Distros. |
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