[gentoo-user] Write Protect is on: USB key insists on being "read-only filesystem"

[Régis Décamps]

Hi all,

I've bought a simple and cheap USB key/MP3 player by memup.
The kernel says:
sdc: Write Protect is on
How to disable this write protection?

[all details bellow]
I use hal/udev/ivman/pmount. When I insert the drive in my gentoo box, it is mounted by ivman/pmount  in /media for the current user
# df -T /dev/sdc
Filesystem    Type   1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc      vfat      251496      1344    250152   1% /media/REGIS_USB

drwx------ 2 regis users  16384 jan  1  1970 /media/REGIS_USB                                                              

And /media/REGIS_USB does list the content of the USB drive.

Now, I can't write anything on this filesytem.
regis /media/REGIS_USB % touch toto                                                                                 
touch: cannot touch `toto': Read-only file system

As I understand my trivial configuration, this should be mounted read+write. Just in case, I tried:
kro64 REGIS_USB # mount -o rw,remount /media/REGIS_USB/
mount: block device /dev/sdc is write-protected, mounting read-only

dmesg says
usb 2-4: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 3-4: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 10
usb 3-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
scsi7 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
usb-storage: device found at 10
usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
  Vendor:           Model:                   Rev:
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
SCSI device sdc: 503521 512-byte hdwr sectors (258 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is on
sdc: Mode Sense: 00 c0 00 80
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdc: 503521 512-byte hdwr sectors (258 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is on
sdc: Mode Sense: 00 c0 00 80
sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
 sdc: unknown partition table
sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdc
sd 7:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

I have another usb key which is mounted rw as expected. The major difference I see is that dmesg says about the other key:
sdc: Write Protect is off

So: I do change this Write-protect parameter?

Thanks and merry Easter.

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Régis

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Régis