Odd read only problem & How to copy DVD contentsForum: Other Help Topics Topic: Odd read only problem & How to copy DVD contents started by: aveline Posted by aveline on Aug. 31 2004,06:33
HiI have tried both with Puppy Linux & DSL to do one simple thing. I own a bunch of dvd roms (not movies, they just contain data files) from a magazine I buy sometimes *Linux Format to be exact*. I do not own a DVD Rom, but I borrowed a friends so I could copy the contents of them to a new HDD I got for my g/f. Now one would think this wouldn't be hard to do. Boot off CD, mount drive & copy. Right? wrong. With both distros I encountered a very strange "read only media" error. The hard drive (hda1) for whatever reason will not allow itself to be written to. I've set the permissions correctly afaik in both distros, yet this problem persists! The one or two times I did succeed, it seemed to lock the computer up (well X anyway...not sure it locked up everything, but the keyboard didn't respond nor did the mouse or video). So what can I do?? I thought booting off a cd (using a CDRom drive in addition to the DVDrom) would be a pretty neat trick so I didn't have to install anything onto this hard drive. So far I'm stymied. Ideas? Aveline Posted by jerome5 on Aug. 31 2004,12:08
I dont think you can write to an NTFS file system (IE your windows partition) from windows.I think you need to make a linux partition and copy the files there. And then try to find a program that can view the files from windows and copy them. Someone more experience will correct me where I went wrong here. Posted by ke4nt1 on Aug. 31 2004,15:07
"sudo su" to root before beginning to copy.Have you already made an ext2 partition and ran mke2fs on the new HD ? 73 ke4nt Posted by aveline on Sep. 01 2004,01:19
I made the drive into one big FAT32 partition.I tried it as root from a term window useing a menu option that just opens the term windows as a root user. no I've not make any other paritions nor do I know how with DSL tbh. I've not really looked into that option as I do want to read & write to the drive from windows later. Aveline Posted by jerome5 on Sep. 01 2004,04:02
so he has to modify his harddrive inorder to write stuff to it? This is potentially dangerous stuff though. Back up your data! Posted by aveline on Sep. 01 2004,05:12
First off, I'm a she. Secondly, the hard drives blank really. 120gb of free space with no OS or data. aveline Posted by jerome5 on Sep. 01 2004,05:35
In that case why dont you make a 50 gig linux partition and do a harddrive install and copy the dvd to linux then it wont be read only.I assume that you have more than one harddrive. Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 01 2004,13:28
Jerome:Q: "why dont you make a 50 gig linux partition and do a harddrive install and copy the dvd to linux" A: "I do want to read & write to the drive from windows later" You can't easily accomplish this without buying another piece of software. aveline: You should be able to write to fat32 without trouble. If you're getting "read-only" messages, it's likely that you should look at the mount options. It could be that the drive is being mounted read-only, which would bypass any permissions you have set. You might try "mount -t vfat -o rw /dev/hd** /mnt/fat", replacing hd** and /mnt/fat with the appropriate device and mountpoint. Posted by aveline on Sep. 02 2004,00:57
Tooks some fiddling but it seems to have worked...tho the first time i tried your solution still got that error.it works as root only & in the help file i couldn't see how to mount it so the user DSL can copy files to the hard drive. so whats the switch for that? ty much Avey Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 02 2004,01:26
I think this works..mount -t vfat -o rw uid=500 /dev/hd** /mnt/fat Posted by aveline on Sep. 02 2004,02:13
swear to the gods i'm ready to just fricking install windows on that damn machine & be done with it!i tried loading dsl and i used the "toram" parameter. fine, the method mikshaw mentioned does work on the cmd line but it freezes the whole damn system when i copy the contents of the DVD to the drive! I'm booting from a separate CDRom and just using the DVDRom to copy files. help? I'm almost ready to scrap this idea to be honest but i figured i'd ask for any other ideas before i do. sighs aveline Posted by roadie on Sep. 02 2004,02:49
If it was me, I'd do just that, install Windows and do whatever you need to do w/ it.Hell, use what works, you can still use DSL or any other Linux in a separate partition and dual boot or run off the cd. I say this because you're obviously and understandably upset over this. Play around with DSL and figure out why it is giving problems but I'd use whatever works if the things you need are important. Bye the way, maybe I missed it but how much ram do you have? roadie Posted by jerome5 on Sep. 02 2004,03:12
Hmmm, thats one thing I noticed about linux, a lack of progress bars.The copying of the DVD is no doubt a tme consuming task mabe the program you used to do it wasnt multi threaded so it could still accept user input while it was copying. DVD copying software in windows is well, err ummm mostly illegal, unless you have software that came with a DVD rw drive. Posted by roadie on Sep. 02 2004,03:48
A couple of things that come to mind.You have set up the hard drive with a vfat partition, are you able to mount and read files on it? Can you copy files from DSL, any files, to the hard drive? If you can, does copying of any kind freeze the system? You said mikshaws method works, so when you use it to mount the drive, type in a terminal "mount" That will show all mounted partitions and also show if it's mounted rw Also try "dmesg" in a terminal, look for errors of the "input-output" type, I've had drives that could be read but could'nt be written to properly. roadie Posted by aveline on Sep. 02 2004,04:44
jerome, you don't seem to read my posts very well... please re-read them before telling me that copying a DVD is illegal. you also misread the one about me wanting to read these files again later in windows. avey Posted by aveline on Sep. 02 2004,04:48
thanks i'll try thoses. yes i can read files on the hdd, and put a file on it from dsl. i haven't copied enough files to clog it yet going from DSL to hdd...i'll try it. theres a dir on there i made a while back it won't erase too ffs... again readonly or some similar error. i've done "mount" & it shows its mounted with r/w ability but owned by root only! thx i'll try dmesg. the damn drives only a year old & *never* used till the last 3 days...i just unpackaged it 3 days ago after it sat for nearly a year in its wrapping. avey Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 02 2004,05:40
I'm out of ideas. If you can write to it as root, couldn't you just copy the files as root? In Windows you pretty much need to be administrator in order to do anything, so permissions shouldn't be a problem....or does it freeze when copying as root too? Maybe you ran out of memory. |