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The USB Support menu is divided into sections, including USB Support and Attached Devices. These sections include settings to enable or disable USB port support, configure USB-related printers and configure USB-attached storage settings. There are also settings to enable support for 3G/4G/5G USB modems.
The USB Support menu contains settings and controls for:
Core USB Support: Checking this enables the FreshTomato USB driver/services for USB-equipped hardware. When enabled, a series of specific options become appear for configuration. These will depend on your router hardware.
(Default: Disabled).
USB Printer Support: Checking this loads the driver for USB printing support. (Default: ).
USB Storage Support: Checking this enables driver/service support for USB storage. (Default: ).
3G/4G Modem Support: Checking this enables FreshTomato's support for 3G/4G USB modem dongles. This allows you to use a cellular provider as an Internet source. For more details on 3G/4G modem settings, see the WAN Settings section on the Network page.
The Attached Devices section includes a table listing devices FreshTomato detects as attached to its USB ports. The table includes columns describing the device's Type, and the Host controller number on which the device was detected. The column headings also include a plain English Description of the media found and the media's status as mounted or unmounted.
If a drive is not mounted, clicking on the [Mount] option beside it will mount the drive, to a mountpoint as described earlier.
If a drive is mounted, clicking on the [Unmount] button will unmount the drive, leaving it ready to remove/disconnect.
Changing USB storage settings which require loading/reloading of the USB storage drivers may affect the content in your syslog (system log) file. For example, enabling or disabling filesystems, or unmounting the drive where the syslog file is stored may cause storage errors and possibly loss of some syslog content.
For this reason, it is recommended that if you want to change any USB filesystem settings, you first reconfigure syslog to be stored in RAM. Only then should you adjust filesystem settings and/or unmount the drive. After that, you can safely configure syslog to be safely stored on USB storage once again, where it should not be interrupted.
USB filesystem corruption is one of the most common causes of system instability. Keep this in mind when troubleshooting router issues. You could experience a VPN connectivity issue, WiFi instability or any other sort of random problem which might be directly or indirectly caused by USB filesystem issues. Make sure to add USB filesystem checks to your troubleshooting checklist.