Transferring Files to/from your Intel Edison through USB

Prerequisites:

• Edison Board
  • Standard Yocto Edison build
• Either serial or SSH connection to Edison terminal (putty, cygwin, ...)

Description

The USB mass storage device hosted by an Edison module can either be accessed from a PC or by the Edison module but cannot be accessed by both at the same time. In order to transfer files the Edison must first be configured to communicate with the sending device and then switched to the receiving device after transfer is completed. The commands below came originally from the Intel Edison Forum: Access Edison mass-storage from within Edison

Accessing USB mass storage partition from Edison

Note: This step fails on rmmod g_multi when the Edison board is not connected to a PC.

Disable USB mass storage device (skip if not connected to computer)

rmmod g_multi

Create directory to mount to (skip if this is not your first time)

mkdir /update #here update can be any empty folder

Mount the drive locally

losetup -o 8192 /dev/loop0 /dev/disk/by-partlabel/update
mount /dev/loop0 /update

Accessing USB mass storage device from a PC

Note: umount will fail if rmmod was not run during previous step. A device restart is required to restore full functionality in this case.

The Edison board defaults to this state if you have not configured your Edison for local access since its last restart no action is required. Similarly you can restore USB mass storage access by restarting your Edison module (shutdown -r now). If you wish to connect a computer to your Edison board without restarting and are not powering your board through USB enter the following linux commands to revert back to default.

umount /update #here update is the mount point used to access USB mass storage partition
modprobe g_multi

After running these commands disconnect and re-connect the Edison's USB device cable (not the serial USB). You should now see the Edison module show up under removable storage devices on your computer.