From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Samuel Subject: Re: Lexar Jump Drive & Linux?? Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:43:36 -0800 Message-ID: <44247618.4060701@bcgreen.com> References: <20060324213842.GA1272@lnx2.kvinet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-reply-to: <20060324213842.GA1272@lnx2.kvinet.com> Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: haltec@kvinet.com Cc: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org Hal MacArgle wrote: > Greetings: One year ago I bought a Lexar 256mB Jump Drive; put an > ext2 FS on it and used it to transport small files from one Linux > machine to another, all running 2.4.XX kernels, and mounting the > drive as /dev/sda1, per dmesg... > > All of a sudden I couldn't write to it unless the files were less > than 30mB total size.. I figured the drive must be bad; still in > warranty according to Lexar, so I contacted their support people.. > > First off they say I must reformat the drive using Windows and > included instructions for doing this with Win98SE or XP... SE didn't > even see the drive so I fetched the newest driver from their site and > never did get it to work... > > Then I went to an XP machine and was able to format the drive as per > their instructions so it now seems to work fine as long as it's > formatted FAT32 (VFAT)... > > Am I presuming I have to _not_ use a Linux FS with this or other jump > or flash drives?? (I do have a UL641 64mB drive that's fine ext2, so > far) I've been telling some that the Lexar 256 drive works with > Linux.. I'll have to retract that unless I can figure out what > happened, eh?? Any comments. TIA.. (Of course the drive 'specs' don't > list Linux, as usual.) :^( > Shoulda stopped at step 1.. They had it specified as working with Se. If that didn't work then you could tell them it was broken and get a replacement. Now that you have it working with XP, it's a lot harder to scream at them for having a dead drive. :-) Hey, they gave the specs, not me. If it was working with Linux to begin with, I'd say that most things were fine... There may have been some problems with reading/writing certain blocks in the device. I'd try exercising it with something like the 'badblock' command in Linux. Did you have any errors associated with the drive in /var/log/messages? You can also run the system with heavy debugging... Presuming it's just a desktop (as opposed to a heavily loaded server which would produce lots of I/O if you do the following): echo "*.debug /tmp/debug" >> /etc/syslog.conf killall -HUP syslogd That'll have syslog putting lots of stuff in /tmp/debug... (( Notice the double '>>' on the 'echo' command.. that says APPEND (as opposed to trashing the whole file )). then you can go: tail -f /tmp/debug and look for any interesting I/O errors or something else while playing with the drive... One thing that I'll have to ask (OK: 2) 1) have you always remembered to unmount the device before pulling it out?? 2) did you try doing a full FSCK? I'd also suggest using ext3fs, which is a good bit more resilient than ext2fs to having the drive accidently pulled out without an unmount. -- Stephen Samuel +1(778)861-7641 samnospam@bcgreen.com http://www.bcgreen.com/ Powerful committed communication. Transformation touching the jewel within each person and bringing it to light. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs