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Is there a daemon or driver I can install on a Linux host -- in this case a Buffalo TeraStation, but I'm also curious about the general case -- which will allow that host to appear as a USB hard drive to another host when connected by a USB A male-to-male cable?

This is what I want:

  1. Connect the TeraStation to a laptop with a USB A male-to-male cable.
  2. The TeraStation then appears to the laptop as a USB drive.

It seems like this should be really easy and obvious. The Palm Pre -- which runs a Linux OS -- has a mode where it can do exactly this.

Jesse Dhillon
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  • i have seen special usb cable adapters specifically for this purpose, however i have not tried one (found in a cable bin at an internship). You may need to make/find a specially wired usb cable for this so as to avoid a Rx/Tx pinout mismatch – Jimsmithkka Aug 16 '10 at 09:09
  • This seems to be called "USB Gadget Mode" under Linux, and according to http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget/file_storage.html the `g_mass_storage` kernel module is part of it. However, http://www.armadeus.com/wiki/index.php?title=USB_Gadget warns "DO NOT CONNECT TWO HOST PORTS TOGETHER" so possibly you need a special USB "slave" connector on one side. Presumably the Palm Pre had such a connector. – oliver Nov 29 '15 at 13:24

1 Answers1

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I couldn't find anything on a quick search - interesting. Depending on what your end goal is you might want to look into iscsi and just do it via the network - which the terrastation has.

You can then present your linux box as an iscsi target to windows, linux or anything that has an iscsi initiator (client).

The client just sees your storage as a scsi disk, and treats it like any other disk...

Matt
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  • This would be a great solution, but I am interested in a solution which can work without when a network connection is not available (rare circumstances). – Jesse Dhillon Aug 16 '10 at 07:59
  • sorry can't answer your question directly - may a more hardcore linux guy on here has the direct answer for yah. :) – Matt Aug 16 '10 at 17:28