Maxtor OneTouch II External

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 03:09 PM

Hello,

I'm trying to format my usb Maxtor OneTouch II External 300GB HardDrive with a ext3 fs. So far so good. Trouble is, when I plug it in to my feisty desktop, all I see is a folder labeled "lost+found". This folder is empty, but oddly enough, it is the only place on the drive which I can modify! I'm not really sure how all of this mounting business works (hence the newbie forum rather than the significantly more redeeming hardware forum

, where the real techies go) but it would seem that if feisty can handle mounting automatically, something was screwed up long ago.....in the formatting of the drive perhaps? Thanks for the help. This forum is fantastic.

-Plastech
"The

TARD"

stress_junkie · 07-29-2007, 03:48 PM

There is nothing wrong with the way that the hard drive is set up. The lost+found directory is a directory that the system uses when it checks the integrity of the file system. You will probably not have any reason to use it. Don't delete it though. Just leave it alone.

You can add files at the same level as the lost+found directory or you can create other directories on the same level as the lost+found directory.

The only problem that usually shows up is permissions. If the hard drive is mounted at /mnt/sda1 then you can log on as root and perform these commands.

Code:

chown root:users /mnt/sda1
chmod 770 /mnt/sda1

That will allow regular users to create files and directories in /mnt/sda1 which is on the external hard drive.

If your hard drive shows up as /dev/sda1 and if it automatically mounts as /mnt/sda1 then you can do these commands.

Code:

touch /mnt/sda1/empty-file.txt
mkdir /mnt/sda1/my.data

Those are just examples to show you that you can create files and directories on the hard drive.

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 04:38 PM

stress_junkie,

Twice now in one day! You the man! Permissions was the issue. Had to allow that group access (not "users" on my computer, but I figured it out). Also used chmod 777 instead. Working like a charm now. Thanks.

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 04:41 PM

Oh crap. Now neither computer wants to let me eject/disconnect the drive! No real info from feisty either, just "You cannot disconnect the drive now". Thanks feisty....

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 06:27 PM

And now when I mount it to my other comp it mounts as disk-1, except with errors.......argh!@@!@$!#%

stress_junkie · 07-29-2007, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

Oh crap. Now neither computer wants to let me eject/disconnect the drive! No real info from feisty either, just "You cannot disconnect the drive now". Thanks feisty....

Linux won't allow you to dismount a partition if a process is using that partition as its current working directory.

Code:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3
cd /mnt/sda3
pwd
/mnt/sda3
umount /mnt/sda3
umount: /mnt/sda3: device is busy
umount: /mnt/sda3: device is busy
lsof /mnt/sda3
COMMAND   PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
bash    16968 root  cwd    DIR    8,3 4096    2 /mnt/sda3
lsof    17097 root  cwd    DIR    8,3 4096    2 /mnt/sda3
lsof    17098 root  cwd    DIR    8,3 4096    2 /mnt/sda3

stress_junkie · 07-29-2007, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

And now when I mount it to my other comp it mounts as disk-1, except with errors.......argh!@@!@$!#%

You can control how Linux mounts any given hard drive using the /etc/fstab file. If you have more than on USB hard drive then you will have to configure udev instead of using /etc/fstab.

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 07:01 PM

I wasn't though. And now I can't mount the disk (well it mount's though it reports "Cannot mount volume") because it "cannot create link /etc/mtab~ Perhaps there is a stale lock file?" Yes, perhaps..... I don't even know what the @#%^ that means!!!!!

stress_junkie · 07-29-2007, 07:10 PM

The /etc/mtab~ file should be a backup before edit of the /etc/mtab file. The system maintains the /etc/mtab file so there shouldn't be any problems, but evidently there is a problem. Hmmmmm. Try this. I have opened the /etc/mtab file in vi in one window and I have entered the lsof command in another window.

Code:

lsof / | grep mtab
vi        17209       root    4u   REG        3,3   12288 420454 /etc/.mtab.swp

Plastech · 07-29-2007, 11:00 PM

Doesn't show anything unless I run as sudo. When I do, I get:
vi 17717 root 7u REG 8,1 12288 6555771 /etc/.mtab.swp

stress_junkie · 07-30-2007, 05:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

Doesn't show anything unless I run as sudo. When I do, I get:
vi 17717 root 7u REG 8,1 12288 6555771 /etc/.mtab.swp

That's exactly like the example that I showed you. That means that you must have a process that is using vi to edit the /etc/mtab file. The process id is 17717. Try this.

Code:

sudo kill -9 17717

That should free up the /etc/mtab file. In the future don't edit the /etc/mtab file.

Plastech · 07-30-2007, 12:11 PM

LOL, I thought you were asking me to edit the mtab file and then pull up lsof. Of course it showed up in there. Lol.

Okay, I almost have this thing figured out. First off, the mounting and unmounting issue:
Apparently this is a bug in feisty and it affects external HDs with external power. Apparently they unmount but then remount before very quickly. If I use the "sudo umount /media/Maxtor\ External/" command, it unmounts just fine.

Second, it seems that if I add or remove files from the terminal, everything works fine. It looks like the problem is with nautilus not having permissions (NTFS and permissions?! Did I mention that I've given up on ext3 because of these damn permissions by the way? Now using ntfs-3g) to write onto the drive no matter what the partition. But goto terminal and touch as any user? No problem! :shrug:

Plastech · 07-30-2007, 12:12 PM

P.S. Can I get an ALL HAIL STRESS JUNKIE in here?

stress_junkie · 07-30-2007, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plastech

P.S. Can I get an ALL HAIL STRESS JUNKIE in here?

Thanks.

Plastech · 07-30-2007, 03:02 PM

So any ideas on how to get nautilus to recognize the hard drive? I could care less about the mounting/unmounting problem....