On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:48 PM, John Jason Jordan <[email protected]>wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:02:49 -0800 (PST)
> Rich Shepard <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> >
> > > I never had this problem with Ubuntu or when I was trying Debian
> > > testing. But when I installed Fedora 12, and now with OpenSuse 11.2,
> > > when I plug in my USB drive Nautilus won't let me write to it because
> > > it is read-only.
> >
> >    Sometimes I get that when the entry in /etc/fstab does not include the
> > 'users' option.
> > > /dev/sdb1 on /media/USB Drive type vfat
> > >
> (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit,uid=1000,gid=100,shortname=lower,dmask=0077,utf8=1,flush)
> >
> >    I don't know why the options are in parentheses or why there are so
> many.
> > On my system /etc/fstab has two mountable USB devices:
> >
> > /dev/sda1        /mnt/thumb       vfat        noauto,users    0 0
> > /dev/sda         /mnt/meizu       vfat        noauto,users    0 0
> >
> > and both work for me as a user.
> >
> >    Suggest that you change /etc/fstab to have only the two options I use
> and
> > see if there's a difference.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion. Things have changed.
>
> Due to the overwhelming bugs in Gnome 2.8.0 I have wiped out OpenSuse 11.2
> and installed OpenSuse 11.1. Hopefully (knocking on wood, throwing salt over
> shoulder, crossing fingers) things will be much better.
>
> Before I wiped out 11.2 I needed to copy a couple of folders to something,
> one being my Mail folder and the other being the live CD of 11.1 that I had
> downloaded. The latter could easily be reproduced, but I really needed the
> Mail folder. I have two other USB sticks, an ancient 512 MB and an almost as
> old 1 GB. Both mounted as RW. I got the mail folder on one, and the 11.1 ISO
> on the other, although I had to delete the PLUG flyers to make room. They're
> on my old hard disk and I have other backups, so not to worry.
>
> Now that I am running with 11.1 I stuck in the offending USB drive.
> Nautilus popped up a window displaying the contents, but every single item
> had a padlock on it. From the command line "ls -la" shows that every single
> item on the drive is owned by jjj (that's me!) of the group root (not me!).
>
> Somehow, while using this drive and installing various different distros
> the ownership has gotten messed up. And it is still not mounted read/write.
> Even as root I cannot copy a file to it. Yet the mount command still says it
> is (rw).
>
> The thing is that I use this drive to transfer things to professors and
> other students at PSU. I can probably fix /etc/fstab, but what happens when
> I hand it to someone else with a Windows or Mac computer?
>
> Maybe I should just copy everything off of it to a DVD and reformat it as
> vfat.
>
> Sorry for the lack of linewrap. Sylpheed won't install on OpenSuse 11.1 and
> I had to install Claws Mail instead. I can't find the button for Linewrap.
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>

I had a USB drive that suddenly went read only no matter what voodoo I did
and it turned out it was bad. I would make copies of your data off it and
see if formatting or failing that, dd'ing /dev/zero to it to see if it
solves the issue.

Drew-
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