In the last week or so I have been having trouble with Darktable but I think I have traced it back to the fact that my External USB HD has become Read-only. I cannot move anything to the wastebin or create new folders in folders that I have created new folders before. It is a partitioned USB drive and I have been using it for well over a year with no previous problems. I only really use Linux for DT so although I am quite technical a lot of the possible suggestions I have read seem to conflict so I don’t know what to do next.
Error msgs
In DT I get "cannot write XMP file ‘/run/media/steve/Linx B up/…’:‘Read-only file system’. "
Using Dolphin I get “Could not make folder/run/media/steve…”
System info.
KDE Plasma 6.2.4
KDE Frameworks 6.8.0
Qt version 6.8.1
Kernel 6.11.0-3rt7-MANJARO (64 bit)
Graphics X11
External Hard Drive is Toshiba USB with 2 partitions both ExFAT
They are mounted on /run/media/steve
Mounted from /dev/sdc1 and sdc2
Permissions states Owner ‘can view and modify’ but group and others ‘can only view content’
It states that User is Steve and Group is Steve.
N.b. I have not changed any of these settings ( I have been trying to but failing since this started) but I am the only user and this problem has only existed for about a week. I updated the kernel last week from 6.6.63-1 when I received a message telling me to do so on a start up. I can’t help but think this may have something to do with it as other than software updates nothing has changed.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Note that paths/mountpoints should not contain any spaces.
Linux permissions do not apply to exfat formatted partitions.
You might try checking the partitions concerned using chkdsk. This should be performed from within a Windows environment.
As a new forum user, please take some time to familiarise yourself with Forum requirements; in particular, the many ways to use the forum to your benefit:
I know ExFAT has a tendency to corrupt somewhat more often than most filesystems (I had a brand-new SD card suffer a filesystem crash the first time I used it in my camera). That might well make it read-only, I suspect.
I’d suggest trying to fsck it first, to see if that can fix it.
I’m aware that a corrupted NTFS file system will become “read-only” or even “unmountable” under Linux, so I am not too surprised to see this with exFAT as well.
What I’d do is copy the contents to another drive, and as suggested above, run a file-system check using either Windows or a tool found in e.g. Hirens Boot CD.
Preferably then format it to e.g. ext4 if you don’t intend to use it with Windows.
Hi
Thanks for your response. The path name is as reported by the error message and the name of the drive has not been changed even from when I was using it as a Back up disk. It was set up with that name and as ExFat when I first used it and Manjaro didn’t stop me naming it like that. And it has been working for sometime so I don’t think that is the problem. It might not help me going forward though…
I will try checking the disk in Windows to see if there is any damage.
thanks again
Hi
I have had this PC as dual boot since I got it and do try to access files from Windows occasionally as I have a couple of Astro programmes that are not Linux compatible. So I can’t set them to Ext4.
Thanks very much I will try disk checking
Im actually always had read the opposite, when ever the question comes up to transfer data from Linux to Windows, i was advised to use exFat instead NTFS, this was a clear recommendation because of the great compatibility and reliability.
After i collected this information, i replaced all my Backup drives which was partitioned with NTFS and formated it to ExFat for that reason.
Till today for almost 5 years, i never had a single problem with ExFat under Linux.
Even Ext4 with a LTS Kernel (backported) had filecorruption error in the last 2 year’s.
I never read something like that on ExFat (or maybe i just missed that), so i think it could be a user error, not unmounted the drive correctly or a Power outage.
I would not use ExFat for anything bigger than my 8GiB stick.
For Linux, go with ext4.
For Windows, go with exFAT and fix your Windows partitions from Windows.
You can use the NTFS partition from Linux also… but if it turns ‘read only’ it’s usually due to a dirty Windows shutdown marking it as dirty (so it’s locked in Linux, but will be easily fixed from Windows).
I’d suggest moving some files and reformatting your Toshiba drive.
exFAT is a permissionless filesystem and the only true portable filesystem.
That is the expected path and permissions are also expected
Did you reboot after syncing your system with new kernel? If you used the Pamac GUI you should be prompted to reboot?
I am thinking - the filesystem can get damaged by physically removing the device during write.
The read-only may be the kernel’s way of protecting the device filesystem from further damage, like it is done with NTFS.
This can happen when a large amount of data is cached and then written. Filemanagers will see copy as done - but the system still has buffers to empty.
The package reduce the buffer so the system only sees the copy as done - when it is actually done.
We all know that file systems used to only have 8.3 characters for file names and that paths didn’t support spaces. And that has actually changed.
Today, paths with spaces are allowed, and even special characters from individual languages like ß or ü work almost everywhere.
I say “almost everywhere” because problems with them arise from time to time (and are then fixed again).
So the statement is not:
This (space) character is forbidden
But:
This type of path can cause problems from time to time. I would advise you to avoid them if problems have arisen because they could be a contributing cause.
If you don’t have spaces in your path, you have no idea what kind of trouble you can get into.
So I ran disk check in windows on this HD. It found error(s) and fixed them. There were a couple of images that were corrupted and unusable but the main set of problems has now been solved doing this. Thank you very much!
If you’re happy enough with the minimal data loss, you can probably ignore this. Otherwise, chkdsk can also perform a deeper scan to check for bad sectors. A quick Intenet search “microsoft chkdsk bad sectors” should find what you need.
If bad sectors are found they are marked bad so that your data will not be written to those sectors.
Being that its a HDD (and possibly an older one) checking for bad sectors on the disk itself is a valid concern. A word of warning that the check/repair of bad sectors absolutely must not be interrupted, and the process could potentially take days to complete.
