On Tuesday 12 June 2007, Lethal Possum wrote: > On 12 juin, 12:00, David Goodenough <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > On Tuesday 12 June 2007, Lethal Possum wrote: > > > Hi everyone, > > > > > > I have a pretty simple question but so far I have not been able to > > > find the answer on the Net. I have a file server running Debian (etch) > > > that I currently connect to with samba. It is great but I would also > > > like to be able to simply plug my laptop into the server with a USB > > > cable and see the server as a mass storage device. I don't see any > > > major issue with this solution so I guess it is feasible. Does anyone > > > ever tried to setup something like that? > > > > > > Thanks in advance for your suggestions. > > > > > > Thomas > > > > Yes, but most server hardware USB ports are the host end, not the device > > end. There are some USB chips that can be either, but they are generally > > found on embedded boards rather than ordinary PC motherboards. You need > > to look for USB Gadget support in the kernel. If you look at the NSLU2 > > support you will find that it does exactly this. > > > > An alternative is to use Ethernet connectivity, and use iSCSI or ATA over > > Ethernet(AoE). That way you do not need any special hardware but > > if your Ethernet is slow you will notice it both in terms of access speed > > to the disk and the available bandwidth for other network applications. > > AoE is available in the current kernels, I am not quite sure about iSCSI, > > but there is a project at open-iscsi.org which has all the code. > > > > David > > > > -- > > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Hi David, > > I had no idea that there was different types of USB controllers. I > will check but I am sure my motherboard only has the usual host > controllers. So I didn't check out the whole NSLU2 documentation yet > but do you mean that the USB Gadget support in the kernel allows a > work around the type of controller I have? I thought I had read somewhere that the USB controller on the NSLU2 was gadget capable, but I am now not so sure. But you do find such things on embedded boards, many of which are supported by stripped down Linux systems like OpenWrt. Emdebian would also support them but has fewer pre-supported boards configured, so you would be more on your own. The Compulab boards for example (at least their older ones) had a gadget capable USB controller. But it is very unusual for PC motherboards (or PCI addon cards) to provide such a facility.
You would be better off looking at AoE. David > > Many thanks, > > Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
