I attached a USB disk drive to my Suse 9.3 system, created a directory, and started to backup up a few gigs of stuff. It copied for a while, but after a few minutes, it ran into some kind of trouble and wouldn't write any more, even though there is LOTS of space. Now, I can read from it, but whenever I try to write to it, or delete the incomplete directory that was written or create a new directory, it tells me

"rm: cannot remove `whatever': Read-only file system".

Mount tells me that it's mounted RW (Bocachica is the drive in question)-

# mount
/dev/hda2 on / type reiserfs (rw,acl,user_xattr)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
/dev/hdb1 on /d2 type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/hdd on /media/SU1010_001 type subfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,fs=cdfss,procuid)
/dev/sda3 on /media/Bocachica type subfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,fs=hfsplus)
/dev/fd0 on /media/floppy type subfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,fs=floppyfss,procuid)


I'm working as root, and anyway the directory that I'm trying to remove is mode 777. /media/Bocachica is 755, and I can't change it because it gives me the "Read-only file system" message.

What am I missing here? Why has this drive become read-only even though it tells me that it's rw? What has changed since it started writing, and wrote at least some data successfully?

Thanks, in advance, for any help.

Check dmesg and see if it says anything.

Also a note not to double post. One of the rules here.

Brian1

Thanks for the pointer. dmesg tells me:

HFS+-fs warning: Filesystem was not cleanly unmounted, running fsck.hfsplus is recommended. mounting read-only.

OK, so that explains why it is read-only, but it brings up two other questions. Where is fsck.hfsplus (it doesn't seem to be on my system), and how should I unmount a usb drive? In this case, I never actually unmounted it, though I tried. When I 'umount /media/...' it always tells me

umount: /media/Bocachica: device is busy

Therefore, I actually did a shutdown before unplugging it.

Thanks again.

Not a standard tool in most linux distros. Look on google for fsck.hfsplus and also use the terms hfsplus tools as well.

Brian1

I looked around and didn't easily find fsck.hfsplus, so I plugged the disk into a Mac and did a repair with Disk Utility. It didn't find any problems, but when I put it back on the Suse Linux box, all is good. Perhaps it cleaned something up silently when I first plugged it into the Mac.

Thanks for the help.

Not a Mac user but does it understand vfat partitions. If so you might reformat the drive to that since linux does fine with fat partitions. Or have two partitions and one hfs and the other fat. Then mount fat when needing to move data from one to the other and still have hfs one if hfs uses permissions and special attributes.

Brian1

what partition is using your usb disc