USB stick problems

[dieterhansbritz]

I now have Suse 11.3 installed and have a couple of problems with it.
1. Previously, when I stuck in a USB stick, I got several choices what to
do, one of them being "do nothing". I usually chose that because I
like to operate from the console with typed-in commands. With the new
system, that choice is closed to me, and I have to open the thing as a
window, close that down, and then I can operate as before. Why? Can I
do anything about it?
2. Someone else has recently asked this question but I can't use the reply
they got: when I try to delete a file or directory on the USB stick, I get the
error message "Read-only file system". Now, I don't "mount" the thing,
other than sticking it in and clicking on the option of opening the device.
How can I turn off the Read-only property? I note that the modes on the files
are .rwxr, whereas on the HD of the laptop they are drwx. So I tried using
chmod +d * but d is not an option, it seems.
How do I turn off "read-only"?
Thanks in advance for any advice on this.
D

[yancek]

What do you have on the USB and how did you get it there? Is it just data like text files, images, etc?? The d at the beginning of a line of the ls -l output means it is a directory, the dash "-" that it is a file. You can use the chmod command with options to change the permissions. If you are logging in as a user and the files/directories are owned by root:root you won't be able to do anything. I'm not really sure what the problem is, you haven't given any specific example and don't say what you have on the USB?

[dieterhansbritz]

Thanks for the reply. It's a 32 Gb USB stick, and I use it for backup. So it
has a mixture of mostly tar files and, in the case of large directories,
the whole directories themselves. These have usually either many pdf files
and, lately, a large number of jpg's, as I am taking a lot of photos while on
holidays. I simply copy the files (or directories) using the cp command.
Just now I was able to erase a number of these jpgs, except these:

dieter@linux-qg9o:/media/disk> ls Photos/OrigBigPhotos/Sydney2010/family/ -l
total 5904
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dieter root 1620562 2010-11-29 11:25 P1010984.JPG
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dieter root 1672845 2010-11-29 11:25 P1010986.JPG
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dieter root 1281832 2010-11-29 11:25 P1010992.JPG
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dieter root 1426922 2010-11-29 11:25 P1020001.JPG

I see "root" there. I would have thought that I can erase them if I log
in as root (su).

One thing though: Yesterday I could not wipe ANY files in the offending directory.
The problem is this. I had a messy directory, which I had backed up, called
Photos/. I rearranged that on the laptop into a new one and wanted to back
it up now, and therefore wanted to erase the ole backup on the USB stick first.
I was not allowed to, all files being read-only. Today I stuck the stick in again,
and was allowed to wipe most of them, except the above. Why are files
read-only one day and not, on another? How can I control this, if at all?
Dieter

[yancek]

Why are files
read-only one day and not, on another? How can I control this, if at all?
Dieter

Shouldn't happen. What options do you use to preserve permissions? You might take a look at this site on permissions:

Linux Command Directory: cp

You could check maintaining permissions on creating tar files. Google gives a lot of hits.

[clarkem]

The automount may depend on your desktop KDE or gnome, and the configuration. I get an alert when the stick is plugged in, but no mount.

I can't explain why you sometimes have problems deleting files and sometimes not, but I have had problems deleting files on NTFS formatted sticks.

What is the filesystem on your stick? if it is NTFS, some linux systems mount them read-only. You may have to mount using the -o ntfs-3g -o rw options.