Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Tuesday, 2009-06-09 at 12:34 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Maura Monville wrote:
Subject: Re: [opensuse] hOW TO REMOVE A FILE THAT IS CONSIDERED "READ ONLY FILE SYSTEM"
Please, don't SHOUT.
I have dumped huge directories (uncompressed) from SuSE 10.3 onto my external hard drive (SEAGATE which is only 25% full after such operation). I have tar-red the huge files. But when I try to gzip the tar-archive the system refuses to do so because such an archive is considered a "read-only file system". Uh, a _file_ can be read-only, but it would take a few more steps to make it a read-only _file-system_. It sounds like your external drive has somehow become read-only. I can't think of how - you did manage to write the tar-file to it.
It happens when the kernel discovers a corruption or has an Oops or similar. The kernel switches the affected filesystem to read only to impede further damage.
It happened to me the other day.
Proof of this could be found in the kernel log.
The proper procedure is umounting, running an fsck on that filesystem, then mounting again.
And then, I would copy the file it was writing to at the moment of failure. Ie, I would rerun the backup, or at least, fully check it.
You could try remounting your external drive as rw -
mount -o rw,remount <yourdrive> <yourmountpoint>
That should fail, too. Hopefully ;-)
Good to know that "gory little detail". Thanks for the concise what- and how- summary, Carlos. One other possibility to consider, if even this procedure doesn't bring satisfaction, is that perhaps, if the drive has been handled, that some sort of hardware read-only switch or jumper has been altered. But Carlos' interpretation seems quite probable, as well. Could be either. I'd check/do both. Short of reading the kernel source tree, is there someplace where one can find more details of kernel behavior under duress, such as what Carlos has described? I'm thinking something a bit more comprehensive than release notes, but not as dry as a complete bugzilla list. --Dan G. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org