[SOLVED] Debian testing (buster), "vfat not found"

crazyeddie740 · 01-06-2019, 07:37 PM

Trying to mount a thumb drive and an mp3 player under Debian testing (buster), got a "filesystem vfat not found" message from the automounter.

Tried "sudo modprobe vfat," got an "operation not permitted."

Modinfo did find the vfat module, so at least there's that.

Both the kernel and the vfat module are the same version, 4.19.0-1-amd64.

Ideas? And is this the right subforum to post in?

berndbausch · 01-06-2019, 07:53 PM

"operation not permitted" for a modprobe is odd. Searching for this message mainly points to cases where people create their own driver, which is not your situation. I also saw something about a major number clash; perhaps you have a module in the kernel that somehow clashes with vfat?

Did you check the kernel message buffer?

Code:

dmesg | tail

Your signature applies to me as well

crazyeddie740 · 01-06-2019, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by berndbausch

"operation not permitted" for a modprobe is odd. Searching for this message mainly points to cases where people create their own driver, which is not your situation. I also saw something about a major number clash; perhaps you have a module in the kernel that somehow clashes with vfat?

Yeah, saw that in my googling. The idea of manually editing kernel or header source code files at this time of night really does not fill me with joy. Did think of manually installing a new kernel as a way of solving this bug, but would rather not figure out how apt would react to that at the next update. And Sid currently has the same kernel version as testing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by berndbausch

Did you check the kernel message buffer?

Code:

dmesg | tail

Just did. Only thing in the tail is a bit of mutter from me plugging in the flash drive to see if the bug is still there. Didn't get the "vfat not found" message or any message (I think I had to try to manually mount it for that), but it didn't get mounted either. I rebooted to see if anything else would show up, nope. I went through the entire dmesg after the reboot, nothing jumped out at me. Anything I should grep for you? Here's the post-reboot tail, just in case:

Code:

[89841.746412] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[89841.856072] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=5599, bcdDevice= 1.00
[89841.856078] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[89841.856081] usb 1-1.2: Product: Cruzer Dial
[89841.856084] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: SanDisk
[89841.856087] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 4C530001300315112060
[89856.084605] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 4
[89859.450159] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
[89859.560148] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=5599, bcdDevice= 1.00
[89859.560154] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[89859.560157] usb 1-1.2: Product: Cruzer Dial
[89859.560160] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: SanDisk
[89859.560162] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 4C530001300315112060
[90830.671707] traps: light-locker[1769] trap int3 ip:7f282b005be5 sp:7ffcf0a9d4e0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.5800.2[7f282afcd000+7e000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by berndbausch

Your signature applies to me as well

Heh. Yep. From two universities and a decade and a half ago, but still fits.

Update: Tried uninstalling the apparmor package, since it looked like it was doing something with kernel modules that might be blocking modprobe. No such luck. Flash drive showed up in the file manager this time, but clicking on it gave the "vfat not found" message. Modprobe gave the "operation not permitted" error. So reinstalled apparmor.

dave67 · 01-10-2019, 03:24 PM

whats the USB formatted as NTFS or Fat32 it might be set as root not user try

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /add here your USB media path

this will able the user to access the USB if its root access only

my back drive is sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/main/backup

crazyeddie740 · 01-10-2019, 05:36 PM

It's formatted fat32, according to gparted. Tried the chown invocation, no dice. According to ls, /media/$USER is owned by me. /media/$USER/usbdrive wasn't created, since the drive wasn't successfully mounted. Looks like something funky is going on with the vfat kernel module, but I don't know what nor what to do about it.

dave67 · 01-10-2019, 05:40 PM

If its blank can you format the USB

crazyeddie740 · 01-10-2019, 06:58 PM

What you say is true, but I would like for my computer to be able to talk with all the windows boxes out there :/

crazyeddie740 · 01-11-2019, 03:35 PM

Did a bit more digging on "major number," found this: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view...1/ch03s02.html

Did a cat /proc/devices, got this:

Code:

Character devices:
  1 mem
  4 /dev/vc/0
  4 tty
  4 ttyS
  5 /dev/tty
  5 /dev/console
  5 /dev/ptmx
  7 vcs
 10 misc
 13 input
 14 mixer
 14 dsp
 14 adsp
 21 sg
 29 fb
 81 video4linux
 99 ppdev
116 alsa
128 ptm
136 pts
153 spi
180 usb
189 usb_device
226 drm
243 media
244 aux
245 mei
246 tpm
247 bsg
248 watchdog
249 ptp
250 pps
251 cec
252 rtc
253 dax
254 gpiochip

Block devices:
  7 loop
  8 sd
  9 md
 11 sr
 65 sd
 66 sd
 67 sd
 68 sd
 69 sd
 70 sd
 71 sd
128 sd
129 sd
130 sd
131 sd
132 sd
133 sd
134 sd
135 sd
253 device-mapper
254 mdp
259 blkext

I *think* this is a list of the numbers associated with all the devices currently active on my system. If so, any idea how I can find out what number the vfat module is trying to grab?

mtlswstl · 01-12-2019, 02:15 AM

> Tried "sudo modprobe vfat," got an "operation not permitted."

I recall I once tried something like this long ago only to realize later that "sudo" cannot be used for certain things, modprobe is one of them..

try the command again but this time fully under superuser, modprobe vfat and it should then work.

crazyeddie740 · 01-12-2019, 11:15 AM

Still no joy.

pan64 · 01-12-2019, 11:24 AM

I think. vfat and fat32 are not the same. Also probably the vfat driver is built into the kernel, therefore cannot be modprobed. Probably. Can you try this usb stick on another host? Do you know what kind of filesystem is it?

mtlswstl · 01-12-2019, 12:19 PM

modprobe -vv vfat gives output if anything is missing
(-vvv gives even more output )

mtlswstl · 01-12-2019, 12:26 PM

if you cannot modprobe vfat, (find /lib/modules/`uname -r` |grep vfat ; depmod -a ), and vfat is an external module , then you should report a bug to debian-testing's bugreports..

You are using a testing distribution,

and so it is normal to have bugs on testing distributions...

(buster will not be stable for another several months https://release.debian.org/buster/freeze_policy.html)

crazyeddie740 · 01-12-2019, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mtlswstl

modprobe -vv vfat gives output if anything is missing
(-vvv gives even more output )

Code:

# /sbin/modprobe -vv vfat
modprobe: INFO: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:364 kmod_set_log_fn() custom logging function 0x5583ab69aed0 registered
insmod /lib/modules/4.19.0-1-amd64/kernel/fs/fat/fat.ko 
modprobe: INFO: ../libkmod/libkmod-module.c:886 kmod_module_insert_module() Failed to insert module '/lib/modules/4.19.0-1-amd64/kernel/fs/fat/fat.ko': Operation not permitted
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'vfat': Operation not permitted
modprobe: INFO: ../libkmod/libkmod.c:331 kmod_unref() context 0x5583ac75d500 released

This mean anything to you guys? It's all hex to me...

crazyeddie740 · 01-12-2019, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

I think. vfat and fat32 are not the same. Also probably the vfat driver is built into the kernel, therefore cannot be modprobed. Probably. Can you try this usb stick on another host? Do you know what kind of filesystem is it?

As far as I can tell, it looks like vfat tries to call fat32 (or some other fat, whatever is appropriate). I do vaguely remember formatting this thumbdrive to fat32 a few months ago, so gparted's word for it checks out. The automounter thinks it's vfat (which, again, appears to just see what flavor of fat it is, and then hooks it up with the appropriate driver), and I'd rather not tell the automounter it's wrong unless I have to. I'm getting the same error messages with an mp3 player, which I'm fairly sure is fat32. And I've got both a fat32 and a vfat *.ko file hanging out in /lib/modules/4.19.0-1-amd64/kernel/fs/fat/ So I *think* it's an external kernel module.