Problems mounting Flash Drive

I’ve got a USB Flash Drive that doesn’t get mounted. Most others work. But not this one.
journal output as follows:


Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: new high-speed USB device number 20 using ehci-pci
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6387
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: Product: Mass Storage
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: Manufacturer: Generic
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb 6-2: SerialNumber: A9CF2718
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: usb-storage 6-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel kernel: scsi host4: usb-storage 6-2:1.0
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel mtp-probe[4612]: checking bus 6, device 20: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1a.7/usb6/6-2"
Oct 03 20:00:14 Jaizkibel mtp-probe[4612]: bus: 6, device: 20 was not an MTP device
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  Flash Disk       8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 15994880 512-byte logical blocks: (8.19 GB/7.63 GiB)
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel:  sdb: sdb1
Oct 03 20:00:15 Jaizkibel kernel: sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

The only negative message appears to be “doesn’t support DPO or FUA”.
How do I get this to run? Please tell me I don’t need to compile a new kernel…

IMO your listing shoiws that it is detected, that it is seen as a mass-storage device, that a device file /dev/sdb is created, that a partition table is found with one partition and that thus the device file /dev/sdb1 is created.

So far so good. We do however not know what is supposed to be on /dev/sdb1. Any idea? A file system? What type of file system?

You say it does not mount, but you show no trial of you to do this. Thus please show:

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

to see if the system can find a file system on it.

Oops! Mounting it by hand simply worked. I just relied on the KDE automatic, but it didn’t show up.

But there’s still a suspicious log message when mounting:


Oct 04 13:38:54 Jaizkibel kernel: FAT-fs (sdb1): Invalid FSINFO signature: 0x00000000, 0x00000000 (sector = 1)

General remark: when something does not work in the desktop, first try to eliminate all the extras the desktop adds, reduce to the minimal command. That will at least tell you if the desktop has the problem, or the system.

Apart from the fact that t seems to contains a FAT file system, this does not ring a bell. But, as with all things MS Windows, I do not know very much about FAT file systems. IMHO the message says that it has a FSINFO signature field somewhere and that it is not correct.
The fact that it is all 0 also could mean that there is in fact nothing but zeros on the partition and that file system FAT was only a sort of fallback. Remember that when you do not specify a file system type to the mount command, an intelligent guess must be made by the system. And that can go wrong of course. (Oh yes, and that reminds me of the fact that you failed to post that mount action, people like to see what you did, even if you think that it is of course logical that you did a, b, c)

Now you can mount it, fine. But are there files, can you read them? You are a bit slow with experimenting and reporting about it. What about an

ls -l ..

of the mount point …

When it is a new one with no particular data, just create a new file system on it. Of your prefered type of course.

I was getting a bit soft and lazy with all these graphical automatics, that grew over the years. Indeed I once chose Linux in order to stay able to do things by myself with my own hands. Just trying to mount it with a simple command didn’t come to my mind.

So, after “mount /dev/sdb1/ /mnt” KDE recognized the USB Media and popped up a graphical note just as it does after inserting a flash drive in normal cases.
Though it’s mounted as root, of course. But that’s no issue.
And when trying to unmount it via the KDE pop-up I need to enter root pw, since it was not mounted by me, the user. Seems all very logical.

journal message when clicking “safely remove this device”:


Oct 05 13:13:06 Jaizkibel polkitd[900]: Operator of unix-session:2 FAILED to authenticate to gain authorization for action org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-unmount-others for system-bus-name::1.44 [/usr/bin/plasmashell --shut-up] (owned by unix-user:xxx)

I copied some files on it yesterday. And today they are still there. I can read them an I can copy new ones onto it (as root). So it seems to work as it should.

The Flash Drive is a funny little Darth Vader figure, that my girl friend once bought in any shop somewhere. Don’t know. It doesn’t fit into every slot, because its helmet hustles either the monitor plug on the backside of the PC or the panels on other devices like the Fritz Box (DSL router) etc… But my 2 front USB slots on my PC have enough space around them to hold the figure without problems. Nonetheless it’s asilly little thingy…

And she wanted to have some files copied onto it. That’s how I got to this mission.

I always assumed that flash drives always have the same basical configuration (file system type etc.). But obviously some producers don’t care. I already had some other issues with serious looking flash drives in the past. Somehow I got over them. I guess I just formatted them with a fs that worked fine for me.

But I’m not sure how the windows machines of other people would deal with fs’s that are originally made for Linux like e.g. ext2. So that makes me hesitating when thinking about formatting Darth Vader. She’s got a windows laptop. And I’m sure that when you buy such a clown flash drive it is definitely “optimized” for windows systems. So my first guess was to leave it with the FAT that it occurs to have.

But it’s not too late. I could still change it. What fs would you chose for a flash drive that you would exchange with windows users?

Btw: after mounting it by hand journal communicates this message twice:


Oct 05 13:07:20 Jaizkibel kernel: FAT-fs (sdb1): Invalid FSINFO signature: 0x00000000, 0x00000000 (sector = 1)

but it still works.

I in fact reported every step that I took in this case. There simply wasn’t much else that I tried. Inserting flash drive, it didn’t work by itself. Copied journal messages here. And then tried the mount command you reminded me of. And here we are.