[ydl-gen] usb drives

[Kai Staats]

Robert,

> Anybody know how to format a usb drive for use by YDL 6.2? Also,
> can this formatting be done on a Mac or a PC?

My experience is as follows:

	a) I have never found a USB drive, factory or consumer
	formatting that YDL cannot read by simply inserting
	and then double-clicking on the "Computer" icon on the
	Desktop.

	b) Fat32 is the most common by factories, and the most
	portable between multiple OSes.

	c) However, if you are using the USB drive for any sort
	of OS level backup or expansion, you may want to format
	your USB drive as a native ext3.

	d) If you are sharing the USB drive with OSX, you may
	want to format it with OSX's native Extended format in
	order that both YDL and OSX may share the files easily
	and retain all UNIX based file information (see bottom
	for more about OSX/ext3 file sharing).

	e) If you are using rsync to backup from your YDL box
	to a USB drive (as I do when I travel, keeping the USB bu
	in a sep coat pocket or wallet), fat32 will choke as the 
	rsync command attempts to set permissions for each file 
	transferred and fat32 does not support this -- yes, the 
	files will transfer but an error will spew with each and 
	every file (annoying!).

On a side note, as I have my internal drive split into 3 major 
partitions (YDL /, OSX /, and Data), I have "Data" formatted by OSX 
even though it is used primarily by YDL (I only reboot into OSX to 
watch .mov files).

In order that OSX and YDL may share these files seamlessly, I 
edited /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow to match my YDL user ID to that of 
Mac OSX (500 in YDL, 501 in OSX) and then chown kstaats:kstaats to 
all files in my /home/kstaats dir and wha-lah! I then 
edited /etc/fstab to auto-mount the Data partition. OSX and YDL share 
files without a glitch on the Data partition (thanks to Chris Murtagh 
for the original instructions on this process).

A bit more than you asked for, but hopefully this helps.

kai