On Tue, 29 Aug 2023 08:28:11 -0700 Lew Wolfgang <wolfgang@sweet-haven.com> wrote:
On 8/29/23 05:48, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 2023-08-28 21:59, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
Hi Folks,
I've got an odd requirement that would be satisfied if I could find a NAS device that supported TCP/IP connections over a regular Ethernet port while also offering a USB connection to make the NAS appear as a USB external disk.
So multiple computers on the Ethernet side would load up files on the NAS which would be available to a USB-connected computer where it could pull the files off. I've googled a bit and it seems that many people think this won't work, but I'm looking at a QNAP NAS that looks like it might.
AFAIK, when an "storage device" is connected via USB, it becomes dedicated exclusively to that machine over USB; ie, the network side would stop working till usb is disconnected (an then the local OS would have to do a mount).
However, there is the MTP protocol used on smartphones. The computer connects to the phone storage via USB at the same time the phone uses it, so this is what you want. A NAS that does MTP as phones do.
I have no idea if they exist.
However, notice that you can not do all filesystem operations. No access to a portion of a file (seek) and write a sector or two. It is basically full file copy, read or write.
Thanks Carlos and Dave. I don't think this will work. The NAS is a filesystem device, which is what the network sees, but it would have to look like a block device to mimic a USB disk drive. This must be what the MTP protocol does?
Not according to wikipedia: "That means that the MTP client (computer) does not see an array of byte blocks that makes up a data structure that makes up a file system, but instead speaks in terms of files and folders to the MTP device." A phone is not just "a storage device"! Linux can use a variety of programs to connect to an MTP-capable device. See e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Media_Transfer_Protocol But I don't think that's what the NAS uses.
I can't use Windows here for the same reason I can't use TCP/IP to connect to the NAS, so I may be out of luck.
Maybe we need to know more about those reasons to suggest any other possibilities.