A native Unslung (or Linksys V2.3R63) disk means a disk that has been formatted by the Linksys web interface, using a closed-source utility from Linksys. This utility will partition the disk and create filesystems, in order to let the disk be recognized by the firmware as a formatted disk. In the web interface, this disk will show up as 'Formatted (EXT3)' and it will be able to store configuration data managed by other Linksys utilites, most notably the information about shares, users and groups created though the web interface.

Disk partitions

A native formatted disk has three mandatory partitions, in a fixed order:

• Partition 1 is formatted as ext3 and gets mounted as /share/[flash|hdd]/data
• Partition 2 is formatted as ext3 and gets mounted as /share/[flash|hdd]/conf
• Partition 3 is a swap partition.

We still neeed some info about the standard sizes for partitons 2 and 3, the information at CustomSizedPartitions may not be accurate for V2.3R63 and Unslung 6.8. Partition 1 ends up using the remaining space on the disk.

Standard files on Partition 2

The Linksys firmware requires some files to be present on the conf partition (partition 2). Some of these files are copies of files found in other places of the filesystem, such as the .htpasswd file from /home/httpd/html/Management, and are kept in sync with their counterparts by the Linksys utilities. A list of the standard contents of this partition is:

 SLUG conf # ls -la /share/flash/conf/
 total 34
 drwxrwxr-x 7 root  root      1024 Sep  2 16:03 .
 drwxrwxr-x 4 admin everyone  1024 Sep  2 16:03 ..
 -rw-rw-rw- 1 root  root         0 Sep  2 16:00 .dongle
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root        20 Sep  2 16:00 .htpasswd
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root         0 Sep  2 16:00 backup_sh.conf
 drwxrwxr-x 2 root  root      1024 Sep  2 16:00 config
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root       149 Dec 12 06:12 group
 drwx------ 2 root  root     12288 Sep  2 16:00 lost+found
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root       346 Dec 12 06:12 passwd
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root       346 Sep  2 16:00 passwd.save
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root      7671 Jan 12 17:32 server.log
 drwxrwxr-x 2 root  root      1024 Sep  2 16:00 share
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root       124 Dec 12 05:32 share.info
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root       817 Sep  2 16:00 smb.conf
 -rw------- 1 root  root       209 Dec 12 06:12 smbpasswd
 drwxrwxr-x 2 root  root      1024 Jan 12 17:32 tmp
 drwxrwxr-x 2 root  root      1024 Sep  2 16:00 upgrade
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root  root        56 Dec 12 06:12 usrgrp.info

A backup of the configuration data can be done using tar to copy the entire contents of the partition. Such a copy can later be used to restore the configuration. The .dongle hidden file seems to be important to let Linksys utilities correctly identify this partition.