After installing the debian image into the beaglebone black as recommended by the armhf website I found that the usb functions did not work.
This post documents a few steps needed to enable the usb host storage and the usb network.
/etc/modules
Create a /home/shared.disk block file (such as "dd if=/dev/zero of=shared.disk bs=1M count=32" or whichever size you want). Later on partition this disk using fdisk or mount in another desktop and partition from there. One thing I did find out is that my windows desktop did not want to mount the disk unless there is a partition in the block file so definitely do an fdisk /home/shared.disk and create software partitions in there.
g_multi file=/home/shared.disk
USB Network
This is as close to the original factory usb network setup as I can. This configures the beaglebone black as 192.168.7.2 on the usb network, and gives the desktop an IP of 192.168.7.1 (via dhcp).
/etc/network/interfaces
# JondZ Thu Jan 30 15:04:27 UTC 2014 added usb0/etc/udhcpd.conf
auto usb0
iface usb0 inet static
address 192.168.7.2
netmask 255.255.255.252
# JondZ Thu Jan 30 15:25:13 UTC 2014 dhcp server for usb0
start 192.168.7.1
end 192.168.7.1
interface usb0
max_leases 1
options subnet 255.255.255.252
The package udhcpd ( a dhcp server) needed to be installed, of course.
JondZ