Sudo let-me-use-my-pendrive ?

howarddevore · 12-07-2007, 10:03 PM

What do I do if a usb drive decides to be read only?

In the gui I could use properties to fix this, but it needs superuser priveleges I think.

Sudo let-me-use-my-pendrive ?

Thanksfor any thoughts.
(ps its not a hardware lock)

MS3FGX · 12-08-2007, 05:02 PM

Is it formated FAT32? You should have full access to a FAT32 USB drive, but NTFS would mount as read-only due to limitations in the kernel.

howarddevore · 12-11-2007, 09:52 AM

Its vfat format.

dasy2k1 · 12-12-2007, 10:51 AM

try

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdxx /media/<mountpoint> rw

howarddevore · 12-12-2007, 06:24 PM

ok, but how do i know what the xx part will be?

MS3FGX · 12-12-2007, 09:36 PM

Try something like:

Code:

dmesg | tail

After plugging in the drive it should give you the device and partitions on the drive. When I plug in my USB drive I get this:

Code:

tj@T-Bird:~$ dmesg | tail
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 2015231 512-byte hardware sectors (1032 MB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

So as you can see, the device is sda, and it has a single partition (sda1).

archtoad6 · 12-17-2007, 08:00 AM

If you want to see this "live", try:

Code:

tail -f /var/log/kern.log

If /var/log/kern.log isn't the right file on your system, examine /etc/syslog.conf, possibly by:

Code:

grep kern /etc/syslog.conf