CentOS - Feb 2007 - USB flash drive stopped working properly....

This past Tuesday (2/22/07) my flash drive started acting really strange
- it only worked intermittently and would disappear right after an
access or two.  Yesterday it stopped working altogether - I couldn't
even access it through my WinXP-on-VMWare.  I rebooted my machine, and
it worked fine after that.

Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?

I'm running a Dell Precision 390 with a Pentium-4 HT 3GHz, 2Gb mem, 1
SATA 150Gb (?) drive, multiple USB ports (including KB&mouse), etc.,
using CentOS 4.4 with the 2.6.9-42.0.8 kernel.

The flash drive is a 2Gb SanDisk Titanium Cruzer-mini.

Thanks.

On 22/02/07, Mark Hull-Richter <mhull-richter at datallegro.com>
wrote:
> Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
> CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?
Gees, couldn't it be a busted flash drive? The least robust components
in your setup is the flash drive.

-- 
Alvin Chang Yu-Ming

Theoretically, but it works perfectly today, last night and this morning
on my Windows (ugh) machine at home, everywhere else....

So far, I've never had a flash drive fail, and this one is supposed to
be better than most (plus, it's only about five months old...).

So, I doubt it....
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Alvin Chang
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 10:35 AM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> On 22/02/07, Mark Hull-Richter <mhull-richter at datallegro.com>
wrote:
> > Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
> > CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?
> Gees, couldn't it be a busted flash drive? The least robust components
> in your setup is the flash drive.
> 
> --
> Alvin Chang Yu-Ming
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> This past Tuesday (2/22/07) my flash drive started acting really strange
> - it only worked intermittently and would disappear right after an
> access or two.  Yesterday it stopped working altogether - I couldn't
> even access it through my WinXP-on-VMWare.  I rebooted my machine, and
> it worked fine after that.
> 
> Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
> CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?
> 
> I'm running a Dell Precision 390 with a Pentium-4 HT 3GHz, 2Gb mem, 1
> SATA 150Gb (?) drive, multiple USB ports (including KB&mouse), etc.,
> using CentOS 4.4 with the 2.6.9-42.0.8 kernel.
> 
> The flash drive is a 2Gb SanDisk Titanium Cruzer-mini.
> 
> Thanks.
	Hmmm, this might be similar to my issue. I have 2 USB keys, one mounts 
okay, 256MB SanDisk SD card in an adapter), the other (SanDisk Cruzer 
mini 256MB) gets funky, won't automatically mount. But when I manually 
mount it, the automount part finally works.
	Last week I posted a message (with no replies) about the Cruzer not 
being able to mount at all. The only change this time was I ran (in 
Windows) Scandisk.on the Cruzer. Still not quite right, though.
	And my box is a Precision 530...


-- 
--- David Woyciesjes
--- ITS Help Desk Support Technician
--- Yale University Client Support
--- 100 Church Street South, Suite 214
--- New Haven, CT 06519
--- (203) 785-3200

How did you manually mount it?  I tried and it would not recognize the
mount point....
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of David A. Woyciesjes
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 11:30 AM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> 	Hmmm, this might be similar to my issue. I have 2 USB keys, one
> mounts
> okay, 256MB SanDisk SD card in an adapter), the other (SanDisk Cruzer
> mini 256MB) gets funky, won't automatically mount. But when I manually
> mount it, the automount part finally works.
> 	Last week I posted a message (with no replies) about the Cruzer
not
> being able to mount at all. The only change this time was I ran (in
> Windows) Scandisk.on the Cruzer. Still not quite right, though.
> 	And my box is a Precision 530...
> 
I ran chkdsk on it when I got home to my Windows box, and it came out
fine, and it's working fine today, too.

Thanks.

Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
> CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?
Actual error messages (dmesg or /var/log/messages) really would be
better for identifying the problem then telling us who made the stick :)

Cheers,

Ralph
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Ralph Angenendt
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 3:31 AM
> To: centos at centos.org
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> Actual error messages (dmesg or /var/log/messages) really would be
> better for identifying the problem then telling us who made the stick
:)
> 
Good point - if it happens again, I'll remember that.

Thanks.

It happened again - the directory comes up as blank, and the icon for
the flash drive won't unmount.

Here's what I get in /var/log/messages:

Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: usb 1-8: new high speed USB device
using address 15
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: scsi13 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass
Storage devices
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel:   Vendor: SanDisk   Model: U3 Titanium
Rev: 2.18
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access
ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: SCSI device sdb: 4013713 512-byte hdwr
sectors (2055 MB)
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: sdb: assuming drive cache: write
through
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: SCSI device sdb: 4013713 512-byte hdwr
sectors (2055 MB)
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: sdb: assuming drive cache: write
through
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel:  sdb: unknown partition table
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost kernel: Attached scsi removable disk sdb at
scsi13, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Feb 26 12:43:46 localhost scsi.agent[10634]: disk at
/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-8/1-8:1.0/host13/target13:0:0/13
:0:0:0
Feb 26 12:43:47 localhost fstab-sync[10710]: added mount point
/media/MHRTITAN for /dev/sdb

It seems that the partition table is not being recognized....

It mounts fine on my Windows XP under VMWare on the same machine.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Ralph Angenendt
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 3:31 AM
> To: centos at centos.org
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
> > Is there some time limit on how long a USB flash drive will work in
> > CentOS or is this a bug or ? ? ?
> 
> Actual error messages (dmesg or /var/log/messages) really would be
> better for identifying the problem then telling us who made the stick
:)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ralph

I threw out the U3 stuff as soon as I tried to use it - it didn't work
(under Windows) and I had no use for it anyway.

But, thanks!
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Ralph Angenendt
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 2:26 PM
> To: centos at centos.org
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> Is this U3 stick password protected in some way? Can you try to mount
> /dev/sdb as a cdrom device? Like "mount -t iso9660 /dev/sdb/
> /mnt/mountpoint" (mkdir /mnt/mountpoint first)?
> 
> If so: Congratulations, you bought yourself windows hardware.
> 
> Ralph
> --
> Ralph Angenendt......ra at br-online.de | .."Text processing has made
it
> possible
> Bayerischer Rundfunk...80300 M?nchen | ....to right-justify any idea, even
> one
> Programmbereich.Bayern 3, Jugend und | .which cannot be justified on any
> other
> Multimedia.........Tl:089.5900.16023 | ..........grounds." -- J.
Finnegan,
> USC

I left out part of this (that I did after sending the message).

Apparently the problem isn't so much the flash drive as what happens
when the icon on the gnome desktop doesn't go away - it refuses to be
removed.

I can manually mount the flash drive to its proper mount point, and
access it through the icon, but when I unmount it, the icon doesn't go
away, and after that, until/unless I manually remount the drive again,
the icon doesn't work (and won't unmount - duh!).

Now I'm not sure if this is a gnome issue or a CentOS issue.  If I log
out and log back in, the icon still doesn't go away (implicating the
OS), but when I reboot, all is well again, for a while....

Thanks.

PS: John, the drive was not actually mounted when this happened, so a dd
would not work, either - it didn't even matter if the drive was plugged
in or not - the icon was there and unusable/misbehavin'.

Thanks.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of John Summerfield
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 2:25 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] USB flash drive stopped working properly....
> 
> 
> Next time,
> dd if=/dev/sda count=1 | xxd | less
> 
> I don't propose to decode the partition table (I could, but it would
> take me longer than I'd do free), but I suspect that the invalid
> partition table will be clearly wrong, maybe all binary zeros.
> 
> To see what a good partition table looks like, dump /dev/hda or some
> other.
> 
> The important stuff is here:
> 
> 00001b0: 0000 0000 0000 0000 39cb 0200 0000 0001  ........9.......
> 00001c0: 0100 83fe 3f02 3f00 0000 04bc 0000 8000  ....?.?.........
> 00001d0: 0103 06fe 3f04 43bc 0000 827d 0000 0000  ....?.C....}....
> 00001e0: 0105 83fe ffff c539 0100 3f14 a804 00fe  .......9..?.....
> 00001f0: ffff 05fe ffff 044e a904 00a6 5009 55aa  .......N....P.U.
> 
> and the 55aa at the end is crucial: if that's not 55aa, nothing else
> matters.
> 
> btw I suggest using dd to take a full copy while it's working. If
> necessary, you can play with parted, extract the bits and gain an
> education later.
>