[SOLVED] Cleaning up device drivers after USB memory stick

Durque · 12-09-2012, 05:46 AM

Greetings

I need to clean up system device drivers in a proper manner. Some USB-stick has been physically removed several times leaving orphaned device drivers. (As you will guess. System is currently running Linux Mint 11 Katya (/etc/issue) LiveCD).

In below listing, only /dev/sdf1 is active USB-stick. /dev/sdd1 and /dev/sde1 are orphans.

Code:

$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
aufs                 1007M  991M   16M  99% /
none                  997M  660K  997M   1% /dev
/dev/sr0              4.0G  4.0G     0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0            642M  642M     0 100% /rofs
none                 1007M  172K 1006M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                1007M   14M  993M   2% /tmp
none                 1007M   96K 1006M   1% /var/run
none                 1007M     0 1007M   0% /var/lock
/dev/sdb1              68M   50M   15M  78% /media/23b07c85-4984-4b31-b849-889bcca7874c
/dev/sdb2              12G  9.4G  1.9G  84% /mnt/opensuse
/dev/sdd1              15G   18M   15G   1% /mnt/USB
/dev/sde1              15G   18M   15G   1% /mnt/USB
/dev/sdf1              15G   18M   15G   1% /mnt/USB

Here's what the system thinks is currently mounted. (Please note the last three entries.

Code:

$ cat /proc/mounts
rootfs / rootfs rw 0 0
none /sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
none /proc proc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
none /dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=1020836k,nr_inodes=213472,mode=755 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
/dev/sr0 /cdrom iso9660 ro,noatime 0 0
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs ro,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /cow tmpfs rw,noatime,mode=755 0 0
aufs / aufs rw,noatime,si=2d0d5fb1 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
none /var/run tmpfs rw,nosuid,relatime,mode=755 0 0
none /var/lock tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/mint/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=999,group_id=999 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/23b07c85-4984-4b31-b849-889bcca7874c ext4 rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
/dev/sdb2 /mnt/opensuse ext4 rw,relatime,barrier=1,data=ordered 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/proc proc rw,relatime 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/sys sysfs rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime 0 0
fusectl /mnt/opensuse/sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw,relatime 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/sys/kernel/security securityfs rw,relatime 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/dev devtmpfs rw,relatime,size=1020836k,nr_inodes=213472,mode=755 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/dev/pts devpts rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000 0 0
none /mnt/opensuse/dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0
/dev/sdd1 /mnt/USB vfat rw,nosuid,relatime,uid=999,gid=999,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/sde1 /mnt/USB vfat rw,nosuid,relatime,uid=999,gid=999,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0
/dev/sdf1 /mnt/USB vfat rw,nosuid,relatime,uid=999,gid=999,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 0

Last mount was

Code:

$ sudo mount -o nosuid,uid=$(id -u),gid=$(id -g) /dev/sdf1 /mnt/USB

Current device drivers are:

Code:

$ ls -l /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  0 2012-11-19 21:37 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 2012-11-19 21:37 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 2012-10-21 21:02 /dev/sdb1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 18 2012-10-21 21:02 /dev/sdb2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 19 2012-10-21 21:02 /dev/sdb3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 2012-11-19 21:37 /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 80 2012-12-09 12:34 /dev/sdf
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 81 2012-12-09 12:34 /dev/sdf1

Any suggestions to how I can properly remove the noneused device drivers properly?

Durque

malekmustaq · 12-09-2012, 10:04 AM

Hi Durque, welcome to LQ!

Quote:

Any suggestions to how I can properly remove the noneused device drivers properly?

They are not drivers, they are either character files or links created by udevd for the purpose of marshaling hot plugged devices. Don't worry if they exist, they don't do any harm to the system nor do they consume an amount of processor load. If you will delete them as root udev will still create them for you when the need comes to use one.

As to the device records you called 'orphans' you may clean the udev data base if you want:

Code:

~# udevadm info --cleanup-db

Likewise they are not harmful and they are not eating up the processor. I often experience similar pseudo-nuisance when device is remove before the system is ready.

There are also times when the file system journal commits something that no longer exists (specially under ext4) so the solution is simply to run 'fsck' and the bad record will go. Usually 'orphaned' records disappear at next boot up.

Hope that helps.

Good luck.

Durque · 12-09-2012, 04:21 PM

Excellent. Thanks. Your insight was highly appreciated. I'm quite at ease now to whether thisd good possibly hamper my system. Thanks again.

Durque