On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 15:56, William L. Jarrold wrote: > Hi, > > I have been getting some odd behavior from my home debian linux > machine lately. Consider the following... > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ echo testing1234 >> junk.text > -bash: junk.text: Read-only file system > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ll junk.text > -rw-r--r-- 1 billj 79438 Oct 24 21:50 junk.text > > ...the above I consider very odd behavior. Just for grins, what > happens when I try this... > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ chmod u+w junk.text > chmod: changing permissions of `junk.text': Read-only file system > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ >
Check the line corresponding to your root filesystem in /etc/fstab. If it has any umasks, then get rid of 'em and set to defaults. The line in fstab corresponding to ur root filesystem, which I assume is where the problem is occurring, may have a label called "umask". This sets the default permissions for files. If no such label exists, then check for the "ro" (read only) option in the line. If it's not there, then the default for the root filesystem is "read-write, so forget it and leave fstab alone. Also, when u boot, there should be a point when your filesystems remount in read-write mode, check 2 see if that happens. Why does the group for junk.text above show onlyu the gid, and not a group name? Did you do this intentionally, or has the group name been deleted or something? Anyhoo... To test whether this is a hardware problem, boot into a knoppix cd (click here if u don't have one) and, from your desktop in the cd, select the icon corresponding to ur hard drive (it should have been detected & configured) and right-click. Then select the Options--> "Change Read & Write Mode" to make the disk writable in knoppix. If this succeeds, click on the icon again and open konqueror to the partition & try to write something. If this works, ur HD is fine and your filesystem is misconfigured or corrupt. You can use e2fsck on your partition safely in knoppix (once it has been unmounted) so try that also. Then boot back to Debian and try to make the filesystem writable using whatever tools there are in Debian (I use Mandrake, so I wouldn't know). That's all I can think of now. AR > ...Hrm....Well, I searched google groups and am pretty bamboozled > (because fixes appear to involve scary commands such as "fsck" and > "mount" about which I know nearly nothing). They chatter in google > groups seems to further suggest hard drive issues. Uh oh. > > This seems to be the root of other new problems: E.g. Firefox is > complaining. And gunziping some archived files is impossible. When I > try these things, I get the same error, i.e. "Read-only file system". > I get a nice close shave with Occum's Razor so am I remiss in assuming > this is all caused by the same problem? > > Might these odd behaviors be related to sudden downtime freeze ups I > have had recently? Here is what happened: My linux box froze (and, > Dear Windows fans, this is something that happens about 1 time per > decade with me). I power cycled and it appeared to rebooted happily > (to my ignorant eyes at least). Did I try to write anything > immediately after this reboot? I dunno. > > I should also add that over the summer I had some signs of disk > failure in the making. In fact I emailed siglinux about them. This > was when I was budget cutting and my apt was warmer than usual. > People (off this list) said disks are very sensitive to temp. When I > lowered my room temp, failure ceased. So, I assumed all was well > enough. > > I've been getting that scary sound again (kind of like a relay that > keeps turning on an off...sometimes once in isolation, sometimes 5-20 > times in rapid succession) tho maybe not as often/intensely. Has my > apt temp been creeping up again? Maybe. In response I've reverted to > keeping my apt cooler still. Has that sound happened less often? I > think so. > > So, I am going to suspect that I need: > > (1) a new hard drive...it is about to fail permanently. > > (2) until (1) more frequent backups to CD Rom. > > (3) a fix so that my file system is no longer read only. > > I can take care of (1) and (2) but can someone offer guidance on (3)? > > chmod does not seem to fix things. > > Bill > _______________________________________________ > Siglinux mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://machito.utacm.org/mailman/listinfo/siglinux ________________________________________________________________________ Analabha Roy Graduate Student Department Of Physics, University of Texas, 1 University Station C1600, Austin, Texas 78712-0264, United States emails: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Home Page: http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~daneel ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Siglinux mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://machito.utacm.org/mailman/listinfo/siglinux
