USB Support & Swap, Samba & FTP

: Parent Category: Router Firmware; Category: OpenWRT; Published: 11 March 2012

TL-WR1043ND

TL-WR1043ND Ver:1.8 [ USB2 HDD, SwapFile, Samba & FTP ]

Prepare USB2 External 2.5" HDD

For disk partition management, for Windows I use either MiniTool Home Free or EaseUS Home Free version, for Linux I use GParted.
In this example I use MiniTool to prepare a 300GB USB2 external 2.5" HDD to work on the TL-WR1043ND.

Plug-in the HDD (Disk3 in this example), delete all partition on the USB HDD (make sure you've backup any important files first).
Right-click the disk and select Create

Create 2 primary partitions accordingly:

1st - 512MB for LinuxSwap
2nd - remaining size on Ext3 filesystem for data usage

Re-confirm partitions

Click Apply

Be patient to wait for the process to complete, it may take some time depends on the HDD size

Once completed, safely remove the HDD from PC

Install & Setup USB Mount & Swap

Go to " System --> Software tab "
Click Update lists to update packages list

Once the list updated, type " kmod-usb-storage ", click Find package
Click on Available tab, click Install the following package

It will show the following installation details.

Continue to finish install the following packages

Once the above packages installed successfully, go to " System --> Startup tab "
Locate the fstab, click to Enable it

Plug-in the USB2 HDD now

Go to " System --> Reboot tab "
Click Perform reboot

After reboot, go to " System --> Mount Points tab "
Notice it detected the USB2 HDD as follows

Under the Mount Points section, click the disk edit button

Mount the disk to path /mnt as follows for data usage, select the correct partition
Click Save & Apply when done

Note: the following message seem forever there and won't refresh on my browser, just wait for at least 1min, then simply click the tab above again

Under the SWAP section, click the disk edit button

Select the correct partition for swap
Click Save & Apply when done

Again, the following message seem forever there and won't refresh on my browser, just wait for at least 1min, then simply click the tab above again

Reboot the device

After reboot, check to ensure the disk has been mounted correctly as follows

SSH into the device via PuTTY

Type the following commands to re-confirm mount disk and swap partitions

USB HDD & Swap setup completed !!

Install & Setup SAMBA

Go to " System --> Software tab "
Click Update lists to update packages list

Search and install the following samba package

Package installed

Notice the new " Services tab " after installing the luci-app-samba package
Don't setup anything first.

To create users for network sharing, login to the device through WinSCP

Go to /etc
Locate and double-click to open the file passwd

Add desire user IDs as per following format (Eg, user1 & user2)
Click Save button when done
Wait for a while, it will prompt to enter root's password again, also there are some error/warning screens appeared, just click ok to continue

Back to PuTTY

Create the respective user's password as per following command format, 1 user 1 line

Next is to create desire folder(s) on the disk (Eg, share folder), 1 folder 1 line

Close both PuTTY and WinSCP

Back to LuCI, go to " System --> Startup tab"
Locate the samba entry and Enable it

Reboot the device

After reboot, go to " Services --> Network Shares tab "
Setup Samba network sharing information as follows, click Add to create as many share by path by users as wish.
Click Save & Apply when done