How to delete files/directories on Read-Only file system

[satimis]

Hi folks,


Ubuntu 7.10


I have some files and directories on an USB flash pendrive. I can't delele them because on read-only filesystem.


I tried;

$ sudo mount -o remount,rw /mnt/maindir
without result.


If run;
$ sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdb1

mount: you must specify the filesystem type

What filesystem I have to specify there?


I don't expect running;

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1

to erase the pendrive completely.


Please shed me some light. TIA


B.R.
satimis

[bigtomrodney]

What filesystem is on the drive? If it is FAT or FAT32 you can use

sudo mount -o remount,rw -t vfat /dev/sdb1

[satimis]

What filesystem is on the drive? If it is FAT or FAT32 you can use

sudo mount -o remount,rw -t vfat /dev/sdb1

Hi bigtomrodney,


Thanks for your advice.


Before reading your post I performed following test.


This USB pendrive looks quite strange to me. I got it in a conference as gift from a multi-nation software company. It has files on it introducing their products taking up 57M out of 1G.


After mount it with;

$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

(I found /dev/sdb1 by runnint "fdisk -l")

I can copy files on it. They can be deleted later.


If running

$ cp -r /path/to/dir-A /mnt/

Directory including files can be copied on the pendrive. But they can't be deleted later.


Then I ran
$ sudo mount -t vfat -o rw /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1

Still I can't delete the directories including their files.


Later I found on running;
$ fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/sdb: 1056 MB, 1056702464 bytes
33 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1008 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2046 * 512 = 1047552 bytes

The partition table seems gone.


Therefore I ran
# fdisk /dev/sdb

to repartition the drive and afterwards ran;

# mkfs.ext2 -c /dev/sdb1
it went though w/o complaint


But I can't mount the pendrive

$ sudo mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1/

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

Then I ran

dmesg | tail

It asked me to run "e2fsck /dev/sdb1"

$ sudo e2fsck /dev/sdb1

....
Inode 421 has INDEX_FL flag set but is not a directory.
Clear HTree index<y>? 
......

It took long time to run without finish. Therefore I manually exited it by pressing [Ctrl]+c


I don't know how to proceed further. Nor I know what mistake I have committed. Please advise.


TIA


B.R.
satimis