I am trying to mount a 40gb usb drive on my openwrt TL-1043ND and I am stuck when trying to get the /dev/sda to mount either on /mnt or a directory I put in /mnt.

mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /mnt/ failed: Invalid argument

The disk is seen by fdisk.  It was formatted for use on a pc at one time and I have every mod in place for about msdos, vfat, ext2, ext3.  Output from fdisk -l shows

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5168 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7e0bfab1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        5168    39070048+   7  HPFS/NTFS

This is the partition table for the disk.  I dont know if it will help.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda1: 40.0 GB, 40007729664 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 38154 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69205244

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1p1   ?      106509      937559   850995205   72  Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda1p2   ?      355982      621595   271987362   74  Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda1p3   ?       82351       82351           0   65  Novell Netware 386
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda1p4         1314913     1314938       25817+   0  Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I am a little stumped.  Any help is appreciated.

Huggybear

installed opkg listing

opkg list

root@OpenWrt:/# opkg list
base-files - 103-r29903
base-files-network - 3
busybox - 1.19.3-9
crda - 1.1.1-1
dnsmasq - 2.59-2
dropbear - 2011.54-1
dsniff - 2.4b1-2
fdisk - 2.13.0.1-4
firewall - 2-44
hotplug2 - 1.0-beta-4
iptables - 1.4.10-4
iptables-mod-conntrack - 1.4.10-4
iptables-mod-nat - 1.4.10-4
iw - 3.1-2
kernel - 2.6.39.4-1-937f5480fc4be62c7bf5eb4a7622935a
kmod-ath - 2.6.39.4+2011-12-01-2
kmod-ath9k - 2.6.39.4+2011-12-01-2
kmod-ath9k-common - 2.6.39.4+2011-12-01-2
kmod-button-hotplug - 2.6.39.4-3
kmod-cfg80211 - 2.6.39.4+2011-12-01-2
kmod-crypto-aes - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-crypto-arc4 - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-crypto-core - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-fs-msdos - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-fs-vfat - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-core - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-gpio-keys-polled - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-input-polldev - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-conntrack - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-core - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-nat - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ipt-nathelper - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-leds-gpio - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ledtrig-usbdev - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-lib-crc-ccitt - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-mac80211 - 2.6.39.4+2011-12-01-2
kmod-nls-base - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-nls-cp437 - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-ppp - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-pppoe - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-scsi-core - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-core - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-ohci - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-storage - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb-uhci - 2.6.39.4-1
kmod-usb2 - 2.6.39.4-1
libc - 0.9.32-103
libext2fs - 1.41.12-2
libgcc - 4.5-linaro-103
libgdbm - 1.9.1-2
libip4tc - 1.4.10-4
libiwinfo - 23
libiwinfo-lua - 23
liblua - 5.1.4-8
libnet0 - 1.0.2a-8
libnids - 1.18-1
libnl-tiny - 0.1-2
libopenssl - 1.0.0g-1
libpcap - 1.1.1-1
librpc - 0.9.32-rc2-0a2179bbc0844928f2a0ec01dba93d9b5d6d41a7
libuci - 2011-11-14.1-1
libuci-lua - 2011-11-14.1-1
libxtables - 1.4.10-4
lua - 5.1.4-8
luci - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-app-firewall - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-i18n-english - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-core - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-ipkg - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-lmo - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-nixio - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-sys - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-lib-web - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-mod-admin-core - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-mod-admin-full - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-proto-core - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-proto-ppp - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-sgi-cgi - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-theme-base - trunk+svn8193-1
luci-theme-openwrt - trunk+svn8193-1
mtd - 17
opkg - 618-2
ppp - 2.4.5-4
ppp-mod-pppoe - 2.4.5-4
swconfig - 10
uboot-envtools - 2011.06-4
uci - 2011-11-14.1-1
uhttpd - 30
wireless-tools - 29-4
wpad-mini - 20111103-3
zlib - 1.2.5-1
root@OpenWrt:/#

Maybe it's little to late, but I had same problem, and googling brings this page first.
That's what helped:

1. insert your device, try to mount, run dmesg, in console you'll se sth. like that:

[  545.550000] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found
[  600.250000] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found
[  814.410000] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found
[  822.040000] FAT-fs (sda1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found

that's because you're missing package for language support, in my case: kmod-nls-iso8859-1

to fix it just

opkg update
opkg install kmod-nls-iso8859-1

more about that: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/usb.storage

@pawloch - thank you for sharing. I was trying to fix this by upgrading packages and such. It turned out I needed to (re)format the drive, `dmesg `was giving these cryptic messages:

```
[  792.920000] EXT4-fs (sda2): couldn't mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities
[  792.930000] EXT4-fs (sda2): couldn't mount as ext2 due to feature incompatibilities
[  792.970000] JBD2: no valid journal superblock found
[  792.980000] EXT4-fs (sda2): error loading journal
```

(Last edited by danielsokolowski on 27 Jul 2014, 20:30)