ASUS EEE PC 701 external hard drive write failure issue. (solved)

[deathromantik]

Hello all, I am woundering someone could please help with this annoying problem.
I can not create new files or folders on my WD external HDD(FAT32).
The error message I get is: Could not make folder /mnt/windows/Muzik/New Folder.

My version is 2009 not sure if it is .1 or .2 I have done updates.
My computer is an ASUS EEE PC 701 with 2GB RAM, root on the 8GB SSD, home on a 16GB SDHC card.

Searches on google and the forum don't turn up anything useful, my google-fu is not strong. :-)

[muungwana]

external hard drives are supposed to show up in "/media" folder, not "/mnt" folder.

your problem could be that you dont have necessary permissions to write to "/mnt/windows/Muzik" or the external hard drive is mounted someplace else and that path doesnt exist

can you open the terminal and type these two commands and copy and paste their results here?

cat /etc/fstab

ls -dl /mnt/windows/Muzik

[deathromantik]

I have since updated to PCLOS 2010beta1. I still have yhe same, problem, I cannot unmount out side of diskdrake. I get an error saying the it cannot be unmounted due to not being mounted by HAL. Trying to set the mout point to: /media, or usr/media dose not help.

[muungwana]

what does this command give you? (copy and paste it on the terminal)

cat /etc/fstab

[deathromantik]

Here is the result for cat /etc/fstab

# Entry for /dev/sdc1 :
Uuid= 91A7-8CC8 /usr/media vfat umask=000 0 0

Results for the other command (changed to reflect the new location due to my mucking about).
ls  -dl /usr/media/Musik:
drwxr-xr-x 95 root root 32768 2010-01-20 02:16 /usr/media/Musik/

[muungwana]

Here is the result for cat /etc/fstab

# Entry for /dev/sdc1 :
Uuid= 91A7-8CC8 /usr/media vfat umask=000 0 0

Results for the other command (changed to reflect the new location due to my mucking about).
ls  -dl /usr/media/Musik:
drwxr-xr-x 95 root root 32768 2010-01-20 02:16 /usr/media/Musik/

only root could write to that folder and that is why you do not have writing access to it.

open the terminal, copy and paste the following command and enter root's password when asked

su -c "chmod 777 /usr/media/Musik"

external mass storage devices arent really supposed to have entries in fstab. If the above give you problem, open "/etc/fstab/" text file as root and add "#" infront of that line and restart and see if this device will show up in the device notifier icon or in dolphin devices bar.

[deathromantik]

I tried all that, still can not create file or folders on that drive.
Though it has not been all for nothing, I did learn some console commands and learn that a # is used to make a devise not on fstab.
I wanted to test to see if I could do it in superuser mode, but I could not find Dolphin(super user mode) in the kmenu and the do as root option puts me into konquorer (super user mode).
And that has no options for making new files and folders like it used to in KDE 3.

[muungwana]

external mass storage devices are not supposed to have entries in fstab and they are not supposed to be handled by diskdrake since diskdrake will default to attempt to create fstab entries.

fstab is meant to be used for internal devices only.

assuming you have the "#" infront of that drive's fstab entry. Remove the drive and restart your computer and plug it in when the computer is running.

Do you have the device notifier applet on your panel? It should pop up and your drive should show up.

When you open dolphin, the drive should also show up on the places panel and you can access it from there.

Do not try to manipulate the drive through diskdrake, if you do, do not say yes when it asks you if it should create an entry in fstab.

It is an external drive, you should not be setting its mount points. The system should do that for you and the mount point will automatically be created in "/media"

[deathromantik]

Nope, that did not work. Right clicking in Dolphin still shows the "create new file/folder" as blanked out and un useable.
What else can I do?

[muungwana]

you will have to be more specific than "that did not work".

did your external drive show up in the device notifier applet or in dolphin?

can you copy and paste the entire content of these two commands when dolphin doesnt give you options to create new folder?

cat /etc/fstab

cat /etc/mtab

you only showed one entry when i asked for the first one earlier, another entry could be interfering.

can you unplug your external hard drive, plug it back in and then type this command on the terminal and provide its output?

dmesg | tail

i still think its a permission issue and you havent given me anything to rule them out

[deathromantik]

Sorry about that, it is just I have to retype them all on my phone as I have no internet connection.

The drive turned up in the device notifier. at first it refused to mount, I thought that it mightbe because the name of the drive was the default "My Passport". I read somewhere that Linux does not like spaces in filenames so I changed the name to "MonsterMash".
Then it showed up in device notifier.

I'll run those comands now.
btw I really appreatiate your help.

[deathromantik]

Ok hear goes *deepbreath*:

[frankenbeats@localhost ~]$ cat etc/fstab
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=70d54b5d  e558-4437-bfcc-1963c894cdd5 / ext4 defaults 1 1
None /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defauls 0 0
# Entry for dev/sdb1 :
LABEL=FankenbeatsHome /home ext4 noatime 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sdc1:
# UUID=91A7-8CC8 /media/MonsterMash vfat umask=000 0 0
# Entry for dev/sdb5 :
# UUID=e9addbbf-9635-4570-0724 - 52594b88ea87 swap swap noatime 0 0

[frankenbeats@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/mtab
/dev/sda5 / ext4 fw  0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts rw 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 home ext 4 rw,noatime 0 0
none /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /media/MonsterMash vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=500'utf8,shortname=mixed,flush 0 0
/dev/sda3 /media/BIOS vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=500,utf8, shortname=mixed,flush 0 0

Damn my thumbs are sore!

[muungwana]

my apologies for making you type all of that.

Just to be sure, i plugged in a usb device on my computer and a device notifier notified me of its presence. I clicked to open it in a file manager and i was able to create a folder in it.

Typing "cat /etc/mtab" and its line in the file said this:
/dev/sdc1 /media/disk vfat rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=500,utf8,shortname=mixed,flush 0 0

my line is not different from yours and things should work for you too.

As you can see, it mounts itself at "/media/disk" and it mounted yours at "/media/MonsterMash".

Go to "/media/MonsterMash" using your file manager and see if you can create a folder or file

How are things with the other one that mounts at "/media/BIOS", working ok?

[deathromantik]

/media/BIOS acctualy is my BIOS, there is no way I am mucking around with that!
No I still can't write, even logged in as root.
I can write to my other drives as user.
Permissions is something that I have trouble with setting up. Could it be my permitions settings?

[muungwana]

No I still can't write, even logged in as root.

when you are root, go to "/media" and then right click the folder "MonsterMash" and then click properties and then permissions tab and change all permissions to "read and write" in "owner","group" and "other" areas and check again if you can write to it.

have you tried to access the drive with another computer? maybe there is something wrong with it at a hardware level.