A few days ago I was searching the internet for good articles on installing OpenFiler onto a USB Flash disk for my home NAS storage and I found this article written by “Rynardt Spies” on his site http://www.virtualvcp.com/home and apart from a few issues it was excellent!

I had no issues with steps 1 to 15, the remaining steps have been updated with my experiences.

Step 16: Now we need to edit the init file under /tmp/tmp-initrd/. I like to use vi as my text editor. So, here we go.

  • Type “cd /tmp/tmp-initrd/”
  • Type “vi init”
  • Press “i” to enter Insert Mode
  • Using arrow keys find the line with insmod /lib/sd_mod.ko
  • Enter the following lines after it
  • insmod /lib/rs_mod.ko
  • insmod /lib/ehci-hcd.ko
  • insmod /lib/uhci-hcd.ko
  • sleep 5 echo “Loading USB Storage Drivers”
  • insmod /lib/usb-storage.ko
  • sleep 10
  • Save the file and quit vi:
  • Press “ESCAPE” to exit insert mode.
  • Type “:wq” to save and exit.

Step 17:

Now we have configured the init script to load some modules when the kernel boots, however, we now need to copy the actual module files to /lib/ directory.

  • Browse to drivers directory, Type cd /lib/modules/

Note the next directory will depend on your OpenFiler build version

  • Browse to the next sub directory
  • Type cd /%Your-Version%/kernel/drivers
  • Copy new modules
  • Type “cp usb/storage/usb-storage.ko /tmp/tmp-initrd/lib/”
  • Type “cp usb/host/ehci-hcd.ko /tmp/tmp-initrd/lib/cp usb/host/uhci-hcd.ko /tmp/tmp-initrd/lib/”
  • Type “cp scsi/sr_mod.ko /tmp/tmp-initrd/lib/”

Step 18:

Now we need to pack it all in a .img file and place it in /boot/. We then need to tell grub (the boot loader) where to find it.

  • Type “cd /tmp/tmp-initrd”
  • Type “find . cpio –c –o gzip -9 > /boot/usb-initrd.img”
  • Type “cd /boot/grub”
  • Type “vi grub.conf”
  • Press “i” to enter Insert Mode, find the line that contains the old initrd file and change the file name to usb-initrd.img
  • Press “ESCAPE” to exit Insert Mode and type “:wq” to save the grub.conf file and exit.

To reboot, type “exit” twice. The server should reboot and should now be able to mount /dev/sdb3when it boots from the USB stick.

Hope this helps.

All information is provided on an AS-IS basis, with no warranties and confers no rights.