Re: Problem mounting new Sandisk 1TB USB drive

On 1/10/24 15:33, Polytropon wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:03:28 -0700, Gary Aitken wrote:
>> The stick has been plugged into an android phone since it was first
>> tried on the fbsd and ubuntu systems, before I installed ntfs-3g.
>> Mounting it on ubuntu, I see two suspect files, 'Install SanDisk Software.dmg' and 'Install SanDisk Software.exe', plus a pdf that
>> says to run the appropriate file to get "valuable software..."
>> I'm thinking / hoping neither of those got automagically run, since
>> it's never been plugged into a microsoft or mac system.  I've since
>> renamed them away.
> 
> This observation leads to the following assumption:
> 
> The stick is actually pre-formatted with exFAT.
> 
> Problem here: exFAT disguises itself as an NTFS partition,
> but it does not have NTFS metadata and content, so ntfs-3g
> cannot mount it, even though tools like gpart or fdisk
> show a NTFS partition.
> 
> So here is what you should check:
> 
> 1. /boot/loader.conf contains:
> 
> 	fuse_load="YES"

/boot/loader.conf.local:
# added and commented out amdtemp; no longer needed?
#amdtemp="YES"
verbose_loading="YES"
# Enable FUSE functionality for exfat filesystem mounting
fuse_enable="YES"
fuse_load="YES"

> 2. Mount device manually, read-only, perform checks, then
>     unmount again:
> 
> 	# mount.exfat -o ro /dev/da0s1 /mnt/memstick
> 	# df -f /mnt/memstick
> 	# ls -R /mnt/memstick
> 	# umount /mnt/memstick

What was the intent of the df -f (-f => invalid option)?

That seemed to work, although it was properly umounted on a ubuntu
system; or at least I think so.  It was automagically mounted when
plugged in, not written to, and then sync ; umount.
A series of mount.exfat / umount / mount.exfat on fbsd seemed to
clear it up.

> NB: mount.exfat does not have a manpage or help option.

$ apropos exfat
mount.exfat-fuse(8) - mount an exFAT file system

>> However, something, I assume the android phone, automagically set
>> up a bunch of directories, which are empty: Android, AudioBooks,
>> DCIM, Pictures, Videos, etc.
> 
> It wouldn't probably have been able to do this if the
> stick was formatted with NTFS...

thanks

> Why don't you simply run newfs on the stick, with the
> filesystem *you* _want_ to use? You can use UFS it you
> want to, works perfectly well. ;-)

I want to be able to read it from an android phone, and I was/am
concerned reformatting may make it unreadable by the phone.

It appears the problem was not having fusefs.ko loaded, but
continuing trying ntfs-3g instead of retrying mount.exfat.

So all is well, thanks, but one question not addressed:
Given that FUSE_ENABLE="YES" is present in rc.conf,
why is kldlist="fusefs" still needed?

Thanks all,

Gary