I have a usb hard drive mounted read/write, if i leave it mounted for a period of time it becomes read only, without unmounting the device. The directory is owned by me, and is writable: chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ ls -ld ./ drwxr-xr-x 6 chrisw users 4096 Nov 22 10:27 ./ I try to create a file: chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ touch bob touch: cannot touch `bob': Read-only file system Try it as root (for no real reason): chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ sudo touch bob touch: cannot touch `bob': Read-only file system Check the mount details, this is odd as it states 'rw': chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ mount | grep store /dev/sda1 on /mnt/store type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,user=chrisw) chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ This partition was writable when it was first mounted several days ago, it has not been unmounted since. I first noticed this in december, when i was testing vmware out of this partition, the virtual machine was started and left running over night, the following morning it was complaining it could not write to the virtual disk. It is _not_ vmware specific. The disk has displayed this behaviour when mounted manually using 'mount' and the following vfstab entry: /dev/sda1 /mnt/store ext3 user,noauto 0 0 now it is mounted using hal and dbus as i have recently upgraded gnome. Chris chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $ sudo emerge --info Portage 2.1_pre4-r1 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.6-r2, 2.6.15-gentoo-r4-20060208 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.15-gentoo-r4-20060208 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1600MHz Gentoo Base System version 1.12.0_pre15 dev-lang/python: 2.2.3-r5, 2.3.5, 2.4.2-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.1/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 3dnow X a52 aac acpi alsa apm avi berkdb bidi bitmap-fonts bonobo bzlib cdda cdio cdr crypt cscope cups curl dbm dbus divx4linux dts dvd eds emboss encode evo fam fbcon fd ffmpeg flac flash flatfile foomaticdb fortran freetype gb gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtktml hal httpd imap imlib ipv6 java jikes jpeg lcms ldap libg++ libwww live mad maildir matroska mbox mcal mikmod mime mmx motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mpi mysql ncurses nls odbc ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcmcia pda pdflib perl png pnp ppds python qt quicktime readline ruby samba sdl snmp spell sse sse2 ssl svga tcltk tcpd theora tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb vcd vlm vorbis wddx win32codecs wmf wxGTK wxwindows xml2 xmms xv xvid zlib elibc_glibc kernel_linux userland_GNU" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY chrisw@coffee /mnt/store/Archive $
Nevermind,I just found this little gem in my log file: Feb 13 03:10:55 localhost kernel: sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x8000002 Feb 13 03:10:55 localhost kernel: sda: Current: sense key=0x3 Feb 13 03:10:55 localhost kernel: ASC=0x11 ASCQ=0x0 Feb 13 03:10:55 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 131072079 It thinks the disk is corrupt, i guess it automatically marks it read only.
OK, closing.
