Weird VFAT mount problem

drj000 · 10-23-2005, 02:03 PM

I'm experiencing some very unusual problem with my vfat partition. It's mounted as read-write. Here's the applicable lines from fstab:

Code:

/dev/hdb5               /home/drj/MyFiles       vfat    rw,auto,owner,uid=drj,gid=drj   0 0
/home/drj/MyFiles/Music /media/Music            auto    rw,bind,auto    0 0
/home/drj/MyFiles/Videos /media/Videos          auto    rw,bind,auto    0 0

The 2nd and 3rd lines are just so that other users of the computer can have access to my Music and Video collection, which is on that partition.
Now, I've never had problems with it until today. Suddently, it just started changing to readonly after being mounted for a few minutes. It's read-write, and then after a few minutes (maybe after a few writes), it changes to readonly, without even being unmounted. I then have to unmount all three of these mountpoints, and then remount them. This is particularly bothersome, as that also means I have to shut down mpd, which is playing my music, and restart it every time.
This just started today, and I can't figure out what's causing it.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this, and if so, did you figure out a solution?

This may just be an omen that I need to finally move all the data to an ext3 partition, since I don't use Windows at all anymore, and so have no use for a vfat partition.

maroonbaboon · 10-24-2005, 02:22 AM

According to the fstab man page the first field on each line should be a 'block special device' (e.g. /dev/hda1) or a remote (NFS) filesystem. I have never seen a plain directory used there. If it legit. then I have learned something new.

Why not just make symlinks?

drj000 · 10-24-2005, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by maroonbaboon
According to the fstab man page the first field on each line should be a 'block special device' (e.g. /dev/hda1) or a remote (NFS) filesystem. I have never seen a plain directory used there. If it legit. then I have learned something new.

The "bind" that I've got in the fourth column makes it work. From the mount man page:

Quote:

Since Linux 2.4.0 it is possible to remount part of the file hierarchy somewhere else. The call is
mount --bind olddir newdir
After this call the same contents is accessible in two places. One can also remount a single file (on a single file).

Quote:

Originally posted by maroonbaboon

Why not just make symlinks?

I don't know why I didn't use symlinks. That would be much simpler, and less work for the computer.

I now have some more information about the cause of the problem, but I don't understand it. My logs have this in them.

Code:

Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: FAT: Directory bread(block 194071) failed
Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: hdb: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: hdb: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect=94331254, high=5, low=10445174, sector=94331254
Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: ide: failed opcode was: unknown
Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev hdb, sector 94331254
Oct 23 04:07:32 localhost kernel: FAT: Directory bread(block 194071) failed
Oct 23 04:07:36 localhost kernel: FAT: Filesystem panic (dev hdb5)
Oct 23 04:07:36 localhost kernel:     fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)
Oct 23 04:07:36 localhost kernel:     File system has been set read-only

Apparently it was set read-only, because of an "invalid cluster chain." Does anyone know what this is? It sounds really bad. Can it be fixed? When I got home today, I'll research it more, but if anyone has any idea, please tell me. I've actually had problems with this hard drive before (which is why it's hdb now, and now longer hda), but I haven't had any problems with it recently.

Q-Fireball · 10-24-2005, 03:39 PM

If I read this post earlier I would told you that Linux is changing the write access to read-only if it is running into some problems. So would advised you to look into the log

This seems not to be too serious did you check it with fsck.vfat?

drj000 · 10-24-2005, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Q-Fireball
This seems not to be too serious did you check it with fsck.vfat?

I should've though of fsck.vfat. It ran for a very short while, and then printed out:
Read 32 bytes at 99352576:Input/output error

I'm not sure what to make of that.
I searched online, and found a lot of people with this problem (although usually on a USB drive), but no solutions.
Any ideas?

Brian1 · 10-24-2005, 07:27 PM

Only thought. Did you unmount it before running fsck.vfat?

Brian1

drj000 · 10-24-2005, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Brian1
Only thought. Did you unmount it before running fsck.vfat?

Yep.

bb002 · 10-24-2005, 10:21 PM

looks like the fat filesystem has a bit of corruption in it. I know nothing about how well linux can check the integrity of fat filesystems but i'd try running scandisk from a bootable floppy or booting into windows and running scandisk.

Q-Fireball · 10-25-2005, 04:23 AM

Well this would be my next idea too, try run scandisk or something similar because it’s still an MS-dos file system.

drj000 · 10-28-2005, 12:58 PM

Well, I tried to boot into Windows to run Scandisk, and disk Defrag, and Windows wouldn't boot. So, I decided this definitely was all an omen telling me to get rid of Windows once and for all. So I did. Woohoo!!!! My computer is now Microsoft free.
I then used the extra space from deleting my NTFS partition to create another Linux partition, and moved everything from the VFAT partition to that partition. In the process, I discovered what was probably the problem, sort of. One of my directories kept giving me an IO error every time I tried to access it. I couldn't even delete it. The folder help music files, which I'm going to have to re-rip, but everything is working fine now. Later today, I'll get around to deleting the VFAT partition (which I do hope fixes that error), and giving all that extra space to the ext2 partition.

edited to correct spelling mistake

drj000 · 10-28-2005, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by drj000
Later today, I'll get around to deleting the VFAT partition (which I do hope fixes that error), and giving all that extra space to the ext2 partition.

Well, I deleted the vfat parition, and then tried to resize the ext2 partition using parted, and got this error

Code:

Error: Input/output error during read on /dev/hdd

Yes, it was hdb before, but is now hdd.
This sounds like a serious hardware problem. Does anybody know that might mean, and if I can fix it? And if so, how?