How to reformat USB with Ext4 for pivot-overlay

François Levaux

Hi friends,

If you've followed https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs for pivot-overlay, you might had some errors in dmesg. This is because USB Storage needs to be formatted in Ext4!

To do this:
0. Update your packages opkg update

Plug your USB Storage
Install e2fsprogs: opkg install e2fsprogs
Format the device as a ext4: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 (change sda1 for your device)

I've documented this here: http://gdgbasel.com/2015/12/06/installing-python-on-onion-omega/

Happy Hacking!

Jean-Baptiste Clion

Hi!

Thanks this helped!!

Have a nice Day

JB

Yes did have errors during tutorial and believe it is due to the format being Fat32 so need to carry out your 0-3 steps. One question where do are the steps 0-3 inserted into the tutorial.
Here is what I get when attempting to step through:
root@omega-xxxx:/# opkg install e2fsprogs
Unkown package 'e2fsprogs'.
Collected errors:
*opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package e2fsprogs.

Sorry got the problem solved as far as being able to get the USB stick formated in ext4. But don't see /dev/sda1? Only see sda.

Sorry again reboot and mount USB worked this time.

Didn't get one error once got past the e2fsprogs even saw the newly added USB space and rebooted as described in instructions only problem is now after reboot don't see the added space under df.
Tried checking in web browser interface and it reports 15.2 MBs total?

The only difference I can see is on my omega the file path was /dev/sda and not /dev/sda1.
I went ahead and used /dev/sda for my mount dir and point.

fader

You'll get 'sda' if you formatted the entire drive as ext4 (without adding any partitions) and 'sda1' if you created a partition first. Either one should work as far as I'm aware.

Thinking will have to start all over again cause not seeing the USB stick
Also why can't you cut and paste from the browser terminal

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 8384 4460 3924 53% /
/dev/root 6912 6912 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 30588 84 30504 0% /tmp
/dev/mtdblock3 8384 4460 3924 53% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay 8384 4460 3924 53% /
tmpfs 512 0 512 0% /dev

The second time was a go. Up and running with 1GB stick installed. Thanks for your writing this neat upgrade and for helping.
BTW it is not obvious what I did differently the second time so can offer no solutions as to what fixed my problem.

Jack Boling

I had the same issue. So I put the SD in my linux machine and formatted it.

Stephen Tunney

This article should be referenced in the https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs
article that @Boken-Lin wrote.

Matt Ogborne

@Stephen-Tunney said:

This article should be referenced in the https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs
article that @Boken-Lin wrote.

Good idea! Added to the tutorials for you, see the bottom of this page https://wiki.onion.io/Tutorials/Using-USB-Storage-as-Rootfs

Matt