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[Bug 1021375] Re: Nautilus says the USB stick is read only when it is not

 

I too have the nautilus read-only misbehavior on the very latest
12.04LTS (x86_64) system and have the following observations, including
a simple-enough workaround since running into this problem quite a while
back....

I can cause the false read-only behavior on demand by first inserting a
read-only USB flash such as a camera's Secure Digital card with the
"lock" switch thrown, via an SD card reader.  But after
removing/unmounting that read-only  SD card,  *every* subsequent
insertion of a normally-writable USB flash drive then gets the above-
reported symptoms: its considered read-only by nautilus yet a "cp"
command from the shell to the USB media works fine which shows the
system mounted it correctly for writing.

As I believe someone mentioned earlier, it must be that the nautilus
state is contaminated/broken under some scenarios.  My intentional read-
only flash drive method is just one solid way to cause that broken
behavior "hangover".  So my workaround is....

When I encounter this false read-only, I simply unmount/remove the
removable device(s), close any windows using nautilus, and then I do a
"killall nautilus" from the shell (I always see a non-window nautilus
whose parent is pid 1 with my user id, presumably this is the thing with
the broken state that I kill).  After that, reinserting the very USB
drive which falsely received the read-only error will now work properly.
I can drag things onto the drive using the fresh instance of nautilus
that is launched..

Its a shame that after more than 2 years, on a claimed LTS system, I
have yet to see even a "we aren't going to bother fixing this one"
response from the Ubuntu folks on this bug report.  Its not been closed
or marked as a duplicate, its still marked "unassigned".  Makes me
question why I've been recommending Ubuntu LTS releases at all to my
companies for production use....

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1021375

Title:
  Nautilus says the USB stick is read only when it is not

Status in nautilus package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  First time I use an USB drive since I updated to 12.04 and I found a
  really annoying bug on Nautilus. Nautilus claims that the destination
  drive is read-only when in fact it is not.

  How to reproduce:

  1. Connect a USB stick drive to your competer.
  2. The USB will appear in the desktop.
  3. Open two Nautilus windows one in your home folder, other in the USB stick drive.
  4. Select any file from your home folder (small enough to fit the free space in the USB drive)
  5. Drag the file and drop it in the USB drive window.

  -- Nautilus will say that it cannot copy the file because the
  destination is read ony --

  If you try the copy the same file with the terminal you will see that
  the file is copied without problem, other programs like gedit or
  LibreOffice can write in the usb stick drive just fine.

  It is not a problem with the USB stick, as shown here:

  [ 6232.288064] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 6 using ehci_hcd
  [ 6232.426378] scsi8 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0
  [ 6233.468489] scsi 8:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Kingston DT 101 II        PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
  [ 6233.469862] sd 8:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
  [ 6234.178262] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] 3909632 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 GB/1.86 GiB)
  [ 6234.178735] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
  [ 6234.178740] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
  [ 6234.179251] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
  [ 6234.179256] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
  [ 6234.183369] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
  [ 6234.183376] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
  [ 6234.210138]  sdb: sdb1
  [ 6234.212732] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
  [ 6234.212736] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
  [ 6234.212740] sd 8:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

  The permisions on the removable drive are set correctly:

  sergio@shana:/media$ ls -lah
  total 12K
  drwxr-xr-x  3 root   root   4,0K jul  5 10:20 .
  drwxr-xr-x 23 root   root   4,0K jul  3 11:01 ..
  drwx------  5 sergio sergio 4,0K dic 31  1969 DESIGNPLUS

  There is enough free space in the drive:

  sergio@shana:/media/DESIGNPLUS$ df -h
  S.ficheros     Tamaño Usado  Disp Uso% Montado en
  /dev/sda2         50G  5,5G   42G  12% /
  udev             1,5G  4,0K  1,5G   1% /dev
  tmpfs            579M  872K  579M   1% /run
  none             5,0M     0  5,0M   0% /run/lock
  none             1,5G  1,1M  1,5G   1% /run/shm
  /dev/sda1        497M  113M  360M  24% /boot
  /dev/sda5        245G  111G  122G  48% /home
  /dev/sdb1        1,9G  681M  1,2G  36% /media/DESIGNPLUS

  A file can be copied to the USB stick using the cp command for
  example.

  sergio@shana:~/Trash$ cp wireless.txt /media/DESIGNPLUS
  sergio@shana:~/Trash$ cd /media/DESIGNPLUS
  sergio@shana:/media/DESIGNPLUS$ ls -lah
  total 204K
  drwx------ 5 sergio sergio 4,0K jul  5 10:38 .
  drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root   4,0K jul  5 10:20 ..
  -rw-r--r-- 1 sergio sergio 117K jul  5 10:14 ._Screen Shot 2012-06-30 at 8.50.37 AM.png
  -rw-r--r-- 1 sergio sergio  55K jun 30 08:51 Screen Shot 2012-06-30 at 8.50.37 AM.png
  drwx------ 4 sergio sergio 4,0K jul  5 10:05 .Spotlight-V100
  drwx------ 2 sergio sergio 4,0K jul  5 10:05 .Trashes
  -rw-r--r-- 1 sergio sergio 4,0K jul  5 10:05 ._.Trashes
  -rw-r--r-- 1 sergio sergio   73 jul  5 10:38 wireless.txt

  But nautilus just dennies to copy the file claming that the
  destination is read only, when it is not.

  I tested it with two different USB sticks in two different computers
  running Ubuntu 12.04 and the same result.

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