I have an 8GB memory stick, format vfat. I haven't had any trouble with it until yesterday. Suddenly I couldn't copy files to it: permission denied. What use is a mem stick that you can't copy to??

I recently updated to the latest ubuntu kernel. But if I boot in the older version, the problem persists.

I've tried chown and chmod 777 /media/disk

Where is the script that mounts a mem stick?? Maybe that has a fault!

I can copy or drag'n'drop on another machine using Mepsis and one with Kubuntu.

Can you execute the following commands and provide the output ?


also

I'll only post the sdb stuff. You're not interested in the hard drive, I presume.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 8273 MB, 8273264640 bytes
255 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1022 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15810 * 512 = 8094720 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69737369

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 ? 118266 128935 84344761 69 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(68, 13, 10) logical=(118265, 27, 42)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(288, 115, 43) logical=(128934, 231, 25)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 ? 107623 225896 934940732+ 73 Unknown
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(371, 114, 37) logical=(107622, 252, 38)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(366, 32, 33) logical=(225895, 16, 4)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb3 ? 1 1 0 74 Unknown
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(371, 114, 37) logical=(0, 41, 32)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(372, 97, 50) logical=(0, 41, 31)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb4 182523 182526 26207+ 0 Empty
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(0, 0, 0) logical=(182522, 134, 25)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(0, 0, 0) logical=(182525, 214, 49)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

The result of mount:

peter@vaya2:~$ mount
/dev/sda8 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.28-16-generic/volatile type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/peter/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=peter)
/dev/sdb on /media/disk type vfat (rw)


peter@vaya2:~$ ls -ald /media/disk
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4096 1970-01-01 08:00 /media/disk

Where is the mount info stored to mount a mem-stick? If it's on the stick, where??

I found this shown below: does it mean I need to reformat the mem stick?

peter@vaya2:~$ dmesg | tail /var/log/syslog
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990324] FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdc)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990328] fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990504] FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdc)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990508] fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990698] FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdc)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990701] fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990894] FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdc)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.990897] fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.991553] FAT: Filesystem panic (dev sdc)
Oct 29 07:49:09 vaya2 kernel: [ 1325.991559] fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)

It looks like your flash drive is being mounted ok except that it is only writable as root. I also have a flash drive that mounts as the device and not a partition (/dev/sdb vs /dev/sdb1) so the output of fdisk looks a bit funny too. chown and chmod do not work with FAT32 filesystems. I would try remounting manually
mount -t vfat -o umask=0 /dev/sdb /media/disk.

The dmesg errors look like it is referencing device sdc not sdb.

Basically, I think its f***ed.

I've reformatted ext2.

Still won't auto mount. Still can't write to it. I can manually mount it, I specify rw, but it is unwriteable, even for root.

Do you know where the auto mount file is for Ubuntu? Just to check that it says 'mount rw'

I've formatted it ext4 now. It now says unable to mount: Cannot get volume.fstype.alternative

But I can write to it as root:

peter@vaya2:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1

This is from syslog after trying to mount the stick manually

Oct 29 09:32:39 vaya2 kernel: [ 4145.395549] VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem on dev sdb1.