fedora core 1 drive instability

[flip]

I'm relatively new to Linux and I'm not sure if this is a common problem or if someone has delt with a problem like this before. I'm trying to get an external firewire drive up and running. I've set up the hardware fine I think, hotplug ieee1394 is loading the module (sbp2) just fine and my fstab entry mounts the drive also giving it a umask of 0 and rw permissions.

As well as this works I'm getting errors saying the file system is not writable at times but not consistantly, I can make files for a little while, but eventually I start getting Read-Only errors. Also I've had problems unmounting the drive with errors saying the device is busy, but I'm almost certain that nothing is accessing the drive. I've had problems with unmounting cd's before (getting the same busy error) but it's not nearly as annoying as this (I need to be able to write to this drive and remove it regularly). H

onestly the fact that sometimes this drive works and sometimes it doesn't seems strange and that the permissions are all 777 but I sometimes get a "read only" error is a little troubling. Since I have the same problem with the unmounting cd's at times I'm thinking that it's not a defective drive (I hope).

If anyone has ever run into the same problem or has any idea what this could be I'd appreciate the help.

Thanks in advance
- flip

[flip]

well I figured out why I can't unmount the drive ocasionally ... a program that was accessing it went unresponsive and became a zombie (Z in ps aux) and I can't kill it!!!

One problem down

[lakerdonald]

That same problem drives me absolutely nuts. I use an Iomega USB Zip Drive ALL the time, and I am constantly getting errors that the drive is busy. Sometimes I realize that I have a terminal window open to /mnt/zip so I just cd out of it and it works. But sometimes for no reason whatsoever it just hangs on my. I also have a similar problem with my DVD-ROM drive which is internal. I have found when it comes to firewire/USB/serial connections, it is more likely to "freeze" and not allow a dismount if you have them plugged in on boot-up. Hope I could help a little, but if there is somebody out there who knows how to fix this, I'm sure that flip as well as myself would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks,
lakerdonald

[saBrEwolf]

Hey.
I keep getting similar problems with unmounting my CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives. I think it has something to do with the "recent documents" menu. when I've opened a file straight from the disc, closed it and tried to unmount it. It keeps saying the drive is busy. but if the recent documents menu is cleared. I can unmount without problems, sometimes.

this may be what's up with yours flip and LakerDonald

Craig

[cjbooms]

Hey,
Has anyone come accross a solution for this problem?? i've been through a number of threads on different forums and have found the solution nowhere.

My problem is as follows:
I have a 60GB external USB 2.0 laptob hard drive with 2 primary FAT32 partitions (for mobility). The drive automounts fine both with an entry set up in fstab and without. The problem is the exact same when attempting to "umount". I get a "device busy error" even using the forceful approach. There is defenitely nothing accessing either of the partitions, no zombie process, and I have tried clearing the recent documents.

Any ideas??

Im on Fedora Core 3

[cjbooms]

Found the problem using:

lsof f /media/XXX

to show which process was still accessing the drive. It revealed:

gam_serve

as the problem.
This bug is currently been tracked:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=142637

Hope this helps somebody...