Has anyone else have problems with creating ext2/3 partitions on USB thumb drives connected to a wl-500gx?  When I try running mke2fs on the USB device partition program goes through the motions until it terminates with the following message:

Creating journal (4096 blocks): mkfs.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to create journal

As a consequence mounting the drive fails.  I initially had the USB drive formatted as vfat, but when trying to install packages on it I quickly realised that I should have had a file system supporting links.

The router is at a remote location so it is difficult for me to remove the USB drive and format it on another computer.  Does anyone have any suggestions of how I may solve the problem?

1) make an ext2 filesystem on the drive
2) mount it
3) use tune2fs -j /dev/to/the/device to create a journal on it
4) remount it as ext3

Do you plan boot from USB ? I try it, but unsuccessfully.