Install on SDCard/USB stick, toggle read-only filesystem - possible?

This is something I thought about while installing Arch on an SD card earlier. You know these small switches on some SD cards that make them read-only, right?
Would it be possible to have a setup where Archlinux is installed on a rewritable storage device like an USB Stick or an SD card, where one mode of operation would be to use it like a regular, persisting Arch install (with writeable filesystem). The second mode would be to use it similar to a Live CD, not persisting any data on the storage device and using RAM instead (mounting the root filesystem as read-only).
Basically, you could boot into regular mode (perhaps by choosing a seperate entry in GRUB), change configurations, update packages, etc. Then you reboot into read-only mode and use it as a Live CD with any changes to the filesystem stored only in RAM. This could be combined with system encryption to provide a secure and portable Arch installation that can be kept up-to date and simply by rebooting, you have a protected, volatile environment similar to a Live CD.
Is something like that possible? Has it been done already?

Comment on the "why" for Flash Device....quiet operation, less power required, faster performance and reduced size.
Faster boot time is also possible with raid applied.
As previously stated, running all in ram doesn't provide any performance improvement if the system has at least 2GB of ram. Thus the use of swap is not required with that much ram.
This principle also applies to Flash Devices which have algortithms controlling the writes across the entire card capacity such that larger capacity increases lifetime expectancy.
Copy- on- write is also proposed for flash devices which reduces the process steps for writing to flash.
In my experience with running-in-ram with CTKArch "live" system, I found not much to endorse using that mode. A negative of good proportion is the copy-to-ram loading time , which cannot be avoided.
Basically, faster ram is the best approach for performance enhancement in all systems.
Thus, there are herein some reasons for using flash in an arch booting system whether "live" or conventional or raid based.
My raid0 bootable system was outlined in previous post and am using it now. It is not a USB connected bus arrangement which inherently limits performance.
I find Compact Flash in UDMA or true IDE mode to provide good performance speed of 90mb/s read and 25mb/s write to be a fine alternative to hard drives. In raid0 read speed is doubled. Good reason for flash devices but not in usb mode.

Similar Messages

Usb stick is "READ ONLY FILESYSTEM"

hello.
i have a problem with my USB-Stick. since i gave it to a friend it does no longer work. unix says it is a "READ-ONLY FILESYSTEM". anny sugestions how i could change that?
it was not possible to reformat it by disk utility. i also tried to format it on a windows machine - didn´t work... any ideas?
best reagards
sepoe

Monkeymeetsrobot's suggestion is the first thing I would have suggested myself -- your original post made no mention of no write-lock switch -- many flash drives have them -- one of mine does and when locked would exhibit that behavior and the other one that doesn't, it still works properly.
That said, now that we know that yours doesn't have a write-lock switch, maybe you could try this:
It's a long shot, but what happens when you launch Terminal and type
ls -ld /Volumes/{usbStickName}?
If the permissions are not drwxrwxrwx, then, perhaps, from an admin-privileged account, you could
sudo chmod 777 /Volumes/{usbStickName}
and with any luck, you will have write privileges again.
Something to try....no guarantees....
Short of that, you may be giving your friend a slightly used usb flash drive as a Christmas present.
(if this solves your problem, or is actually helpful towards arriving at a solution to your problem, please consider marking this reply as "helpful" or "solved," in addition to, if applicable, marking this question as "answered")

USB Stick unrecognized/read only after Gparted

Hi
I partitioned a brand new USB thumb drive with Gparted and then installed Fedora LiveOS on it. This was just a test as I really wanted to use Larch to get Arch on the stick. So I tried to repartitioned it again. But Gaparted now complains that the stick is read only and so does not change anything.
I then moved to fdisk. fdisk will allow me to look at the partitions and will even change them. But after using Fdisk to repartition and then running mkfs.whatever-i-want the partitions can not be mounted. Even dd exits with a read only drive error.
Fdisk can manipulate the partitions but it complains that DOS mode is not supported and asks me to give the c and u commands. Despite this the drive is not recognised when I plug it into the computer.
After using fdisk on the drive several times, gparted now claims that there is no valid partition table on the drive and so shows only unallocated space. But it still won't write any partition info to the device, claiming its read only!
I'm stumped! Anybody have a clue how to get around this?
emk

dd fails with an input/output error after writing 17MB. This is an 8GB stick. Fdisk shows no partitions. But is unable to write to the drive after I create partitions. Here is the output.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd: writing to `/dev/sdb': Input/output error
32969+0 records in
32968+0 records out
16879616 bytes (17 MB) copied, 217.003 s, 77.8 kB/s
Output of dmesg when I plug in the drive
usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
scsi2 : usb-storage 4-1:1.0
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access HP v115w 1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 15663104 512-byte logical blocks: (8.01 GB/7.46 GiB)
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
So far this looks OK. I had earlier deleted my initial 2 partitions and created one vfat partition on the drive. But then when I try to mount the drive and to repartition with fdisk dmesg gives the following:
EXT4-fs (sdb1): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
EXT2-fs (sdb1): error: can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev sdb1.
FAT: bogus number of reserved sectors
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev sdb1.
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 10 70 00 00 f0 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4208
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 526
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 527
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 528
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 529
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 530
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 531
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 532
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 533
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 534
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 535
lost page write due to I/O error on sdb
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 11 60 00 00 f0 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4448
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is on
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 43 00 80 00
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled sense code
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=0x08
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : 0x7 [current]
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] ASC=0x27 ASCQ=0x0
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: cdb[0]=0x2a: 2a 00 00 00 80 c0 00 00 08 00
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 32960
sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: unknown partition table
usb 4-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
I don't have any ext4 partitions on it. THere should only be vfat. My initial partitions were ext3 and vfat. I then switched the ext3 to ext2 after the problems begun and finally just went with a big vfat. I initially used gparted on the drive so as to label the partitions. I really feel that gparted may be the culprit here but I have no proof. This is a brand new stick that had not been written to before.
And from gparted:
libparted : 2.3
======================
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
Unable to open /dev/sdb read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sdb has been opened read-only.
/dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label
[1]+ Done gparted
emk
Last edited by emk (2010-07-25 00:02:50)

USB Flash Drive: Read-only filesystem

Hi
I'm trying to format a usb flash drive using various tools but they all say that it's a read-only file system. The drive is not mounted and I'm running as root. If I try to mount the drive like so with the command
sudo mount -o rw,users /dev/sdc1 /media/myflashdrive
I don't get any errors and when I go to /media/myflashdrive I can see and edit all the files (only as root however). However, any changes are not persistent. For example, if I delete any files or run
sudo rm -rf /media/myflashdrive/*
it seems to work and ls doesn't show anything, but then if a reopen the drive, the files are back.
I've tried this on other computers and even in Windows but nothing can put a scratch on it. I heard something about there being a certain bit in the first sector which can be flipped to make a drive read-only but I think it only applied to Windows.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, but if I can't format the drive I'll probably use some thermite to toast the data on it.

Hmm. I wasn't very clear: my drive was usable originally but it stopped working while I was using Windows (I just plugged it in one day and it was read-only) and now that I use Linux I thought I'd try to fix it (I have been told that linux can do anything but I'm not so sure). I suppose it could just be a physical error on the drive but it's not got any marks or anything.
Just a thought here, if it was a physical problem, would it be possible to 'reset' it with an electromagnet or by shorting it out or would this just frazzle the chip? Maybe not the right forums for that kind of question.
Last edited by JJ.Eastwood (2011-05-26 19:50:56)

Pacstrap failed. Now I have a read-only filesystem that is unusable

Hello,
I have been using Linux for the past few years (primarily Ubuntu and Fedora), and have used the command line a lot.
I was just following the instructions on the Beginners guide. I set up wifi, and partitioned the disk using gdisk (all my computers since late 2009 have not used MBR). I then set up my mirrorlist (left the first one, and added my university as second).
When I ran pacstrap (without -i), it started downloading everything. I think it finished most of it. The kernel had been downloaded, and the filesystem supposedly set up. Then, I got an error. (I am not sure where it was, and I wasn't logging the output. There were many many lines of:
[timestamp] EXT4-fs (sda1): ext4_da_writepages: jpd2_start:8192 pages, ino xxxxxxx; err -30
Then:
[timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): ext4_journal_start_sb:370: [timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): ext4_journal_start_sb:370: [timestamp] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): Remounting filesystem read-only
error: command failed to execute correctly
error: could not create directory /mnt/var/lib/pacman/local/groff-1.21-2/: Read-only file system
error: could not commit transaction
error: failed to commit transaction (transaction aborted)
Errors occured, no packages were upgraded.
warning: could not remove lock file /mnt/var/lib/pacman/db.lck
==> ERROR: Failed to install packages to new root
pacstrap /mnt base base-devel 35.27s user 6.19s system 3% cpu 17:34.81 total
Trying to rerun pacstrap gets me an error that the lockfile still exists. I cannot remove it because it is a "read-only filesystem". Its permissions are 000, and the folder it is in (pacman) has 755.
I also cannot make an fstab or continue with the installation.
I tried to run the setup again, and it kept failing. (MBR failed too, with the same error.)
What do you think caused it, and what could I do to resolve it. I couldn't find anything like that in the forums, or on google.
Last edited by masasin (2012-10-27 03:18:37)

Are the ext4 errors not a dead giveaway that the FS (or physical disk) are misbehaving? It's remounted itself read-only to prevent further damage.

[SOLVED] Strange Hard Drive Errors - Read Only Filesystem?

Solution: Discard old laptop, buy new laptop
I have an Acer Aspire 5103WLMi. For about 2 months now, Arch has been running smoothly. Until 2 weeks ago.
It all started when I tried to install and configure autofs on Arch x86_64. On the next reboot, all manner of errors were printed to the screen, to the effect that the internal hard drive was only being mounted read-only, rendering the system unusable. I tried to find a solution, but there were no references to read-only anywhere; fstab, grub etc. None that I could find.
I tried reinstalling. However, x86_64 Arch refused to boot properly first time due to the exact same error; and I *know* that I'm configuring everything correctly. I managed (somehow) to coerce i686 Arch to install, and things "work".
Seemingly out of the blue, during normal operation, all running applications will stop, and spit out error after error to the effect of "Cannot Write to Read Only Filesystem!". Sakura won't load (Input/Output error, apparently), and the only way to shut down the laptop is a hard reset (I can't log in as root or use sudo because it wants to write to the filesystem first, which it obviously can't.
Now, I'm going to be giving the insides of this laptop a good cleanout this weekend, and I'm in the process of backing up all of my data, but I was wondering if anyone else has come across a similar form of misbehaviour; or (with a bit of luck) some potential solutions?
This is very peculiar, because there seems to be no reason why the laptop suddenly loses write permissions to the hard drive. Cheers.
Edit: I think I should point out that my /boot partition is Ext2, and / and /home are Ext3
Last edited by aphirst (2013-03-27 14:51:38)

Smartctl gives me the impression it's my Hard Drive:
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 100 100 001 Pre-fail Always - 1711
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6194
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 050 Pre-fail Always - 0
8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 100 100 050 Pre-fail Offline - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 092 092 000 Old_age Always - 3291
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0033 223 100 030 Pre-fail Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 1218
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 294
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 088 088 000 Old_age Always - 123904
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 34 (Lifetime Min/Max 15/62)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 17
220 Disk_Shift 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 118
222 Loaded_Hours 0x0032 094 094 000 Old_age Always - 2425
223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
224 Load_Friction 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
226 Load-in_Time 0x0026 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 444
240 Head_Flying_Hours 0x0001 100 100 001 Pre-fail Offline - 0
Everything being either Old_age or Pre-fail is not encouraging. Additionally, in the output is what I believe to be records of what caused my strange read-only behaviour:
Error 19 occurred at disk power-on lifetime: 3287 hours (136 days + 23 hours)
When the command that caused the error occurred, the device was active or idle.
After command completion occurred, registers were:
ER ST SC SN CL CH DH
84 51 01 11 18 6a e1 Error: ICRC, ABRT 1 sectors at LBA = 0x016a1811 = 23730193
Commands leading to the command that caused the error were:
CR FR SC SN CL CH DH DC Powered_Up_Time Command/Feature_Name
c8 00 48 c4 17 6a e1 00 04:43:08.023 READ DMA
c8 00 48 14 e3 69 e1 00 04:43:08.022 READ DMA
c8 00 a0 5c e2 69 e1 00 04:43:08.010 READ DMA
c8 00 08 9c e5 69 e1 00 04:43:08.010 READ DMA
c8 00 20 5c e5 69 e1 00 04:43:08.009 READ DMA
Could this truly be referring to my problem, since the 'logs' show that the *exact same* error occurred many times.
Not that this tells me how to fix it...
Well, if anyone knows if there is a solution, I'd love to know. If the only solution is to ditch the Hard Drive, fair enough. Either way: I'm backing up all of my important data ASAP.
Cheers.
Oh, and kclive18, after I noticed that I couldn't get onto my Drive, I reinstalled arch, leaving no trace of /etc/autofs/auto.media.
Additionally, somehow I have now been able to install Arch x86_64, but the problems still occur...

Read-only filesystem after reinstallation,chmod failure

I decided to switch to a pure systemd init yesterday. Despite strictly followed wiki my system failed to init with switch to systemd emergency mode with no way to cure the problem. So I followed with reinstallation of my system (32bit on 64bit HW as recently). I went thoroughly according installation wiki, installed and configured the base system and correctly umount-ed chrooted environment. I have reformated primary root and boot partitions with ext4 and ext2 respectively and extended /var partition with reiserfs. My home ext4 partition has left unchanged. Grub has been configured OK when being compared with my two Thinkapd Arch installations. My fstab is correctly set using UUID and explicit rw option. After rebooting from Install CD all seemed going well to login prompt and successfull root login. Next proceedings failed on unchangeble read-only filesystem permissions.
How can I chmod the partitions to make them writable and add users and use pacman? One fail with systemd is followed with another one with unchangable read-only permissions... Courious and very frustrating... Any help, please? Thanks, Petr

You'll need to post files, logs etc. if you want help - according to you, everything is correct .
For example, grub.cfg, fdisk -l or gdisk -l /dev/sdX, fstab...

Read only filesystem when editing files

I just installed installed arch linux and when i try to edit and save a config file it says something like, "can't save file: read only filesystem". How do I change that?

Ok, I think I know what the problem is now, / is not in /etc/fstab. The new question is, how do i get it there w/o reinstalling everything?

Reset lost root password and now have read only filesystem

Hello,
I have recently had to reset a locked root password by booting from cdrom, mounting the first boot disk, editing the shadow file to remove root's password and rebooting the system.
The system has booted OK but, I now have a read only filesystem - everything in / cannot be edited, passwd doesnt work etc.
df -k shows the root (/) filesystem has been mounted on the physical disk I edited:
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/pci@83,4000/FJSV,ulsa@2,1/disk@0,0:a 10085836 185862 9799116 2% /
but in the vfstab it still references the disksuite metadevice:
#device device mount FS fsck mount mount
#to mount to fsck point type pass at boot options
/dev/md/dsk/d30 /dev/md/rdsk/d30 / ufs 1 no -
So, can I simply boot from CDROM again, amend the vfstab to be /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 (instead of /dev/md/dsk/d03) and reboot?
Any help with this is appreciated!
Thanks,
Emma

df -k should have shown root mounted on md0
e.g. on my machine
# df -k
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/md/dsk/d0 8260691 4366317 3811768 54% /
what does /etc/system show for rootdev?
# grep rootdev /etc/system
* rootdev: Set the root device. This should be a fully
* rootdev:/sbus@1,f8000000/esp@0,800000/sd@3,0:a
rootdev:/pseudo/md@0:0,0,blk
Remember if this is a mirrored drive, when you boot from CD you may need to mount both sides of the mirror and make changes on both sides- otherwise the replication may not goes as expected.
Actually, I have run into problems with the modifying one side of a mirror this way. In the past Sun tech support would recommend that I break the mirror and then rebuild it once the system is up and running. So in your case you may want to boot from CD, mount the 1st disk slice, edit /etc/vfstab AND /etc/system, boot into the OS and use the various meta commands to delete and rebuild the mirror- or at least maybe to drop and reattach the 2nd 1/2 of the mirror.

[SOLVED] Root mounted as "Read-only filesystem". mkinitcpio issue?

I am currently in the middle of setting up system encryption with LUKS. I have been making good progress so far, but I do have one remaining issue.
After typing my LUKS password, the Linux kernel starts to complain that root is a read-only filesystem. "Starting NetworkManager... cannot touch file XYZ: Read-only filesystem". When it has finally finished booting, I am dropped into a TTY. I can log in and cat my files, but I cannot write to any files our use any programs that do (like pacman).
I wonder if this is an mkinitcpio issue, but I am not sure. For whatever it's worth, here's my basic setup:
* /dev/sda1: Boot
* /dev/sda2: Swap
* /dev/sda3: Root (LUKS/ext4)
* menu.lst looks like this
* /etc/fstab contains this line:
/dev/mapper/root / ext4 defaults 0 1
* /etc/mkinitcpio.conf contains these lines:
MODULES="ext4"
HOOKS="base udev pata scsi sata encrypt filesystems"
edit: I should note that I did reinstall the kernel after making those edits to mkinitcpio.conf.
Any idea what I'm doing wrong? As always, I really do appreciate the help. Thanks in advance!
Last edited by jalu (2011-04-16 22:14:20)

So it looks like this major problem was caused by a minor mistake. The file /etc/rc.sysinit was not executable. This made it impossible for the kernel to run the script, which in turn made it impossible for the kernel to mount /dev/sda2 (the swap partition) at /dev/mapper/swap. For some unknown reason, this in turn caused /dev/sda2 to be mounted at /, messing everything up.
Anyway, a simple sudo chmod +x /etc/rc.sysinit fixed the problem. Thanks for the help, MadTux!

[SOLVED] Appending Quiet forces Read-Only filesystem

After the update to initscripts I tried to append quiet to the kernel command line of GRUB and it simply causes my system to start-up as a read-only filesystem.
Last edited by horrormaster (2011-08-01 15:36:21)

title Arch Linux x64
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-label/gnu_linux ro rootflags=data=writeback,commit=90,orlov,barrier=0,async
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
If I add "quiet" before "rootflags" everything fails to load on boot (udev, mounting HDD rw, alsa, cupsd, etc.) and after all of those it simply states "Read-Only Filesystem". If I add "quiet" after "async" it fails to boot altogether due to an unrecognized option.
Last edited by horrormaster (2011-08-01 02:04:07)

Single User Mode : Read Only Filesystem

I can't edit files in single user mode as Root. When I try to edit them I get a msg saying "Read Only Filesystem".
I have tried chmod with no evial. I want to change my .profile as root so cls='clear'.
Any ideas?
Also when I try to login to my account in single user mode it says that account does not exist. However I'm in that accunt right now!
Thank You.

When you boot up into single user mode, there is a single recognized user -- root. That's why they call it single-user mode and not multi-user mode.
When you boot up into single user mode, the disk mounts as read-only. You have to make it writeable in order to do anything to it. I forget the actual command but it displays on the monitor nearby where it gives the "fsck" command syntax when you first boot into it. It's something like "mount -uw /" or something to that effect. It is saying to mount the root drive ("/") with user write privileges.
Then just "pico /Users/Mephux/.profile" (although I profess that I don't understand why you have to edit this file as root).
(if you find that this solves your problem, or is actually helpful towards arriving at a solution to your problem, please consider clicking on either the "helpful" or "solved" buttons above)

USB flash storage mounted as read-only filesystem

Hello all,
I'm new to Arch Linux and trying to migrate all my works to arch. Installed KDE, GNOME3, and hardware drivers successfully But I have problems with USB flash disks. When plugging a usb device, system mounts it as a readonly filesystem. so I can't change its contents. It always happens to my flash disk, but flash disk of my friend is ok!
I tried to mount manually with super user access, but no hope. It says:
[root@myhost soroush]# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/
mount: warning: /mnt/ seems to be mounted read-only.

roygbiv wrote:Maybe you can post your /etc/fstab?
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sda2 / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda3 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda4 swap swap defaults 0 0

Not able to install arch from USB stick.

Hi all
First off I'm trying to install arch into my 8540w hp laptop. I have failed and here I'm seeking for help.
I have downloaded the latest arch iso image and put it into a usb stick for the installation
Here is how i prepared the usb.
tried :
sudo dd bs=4M if=archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso of=/dev/sdb
to write the iso in to the usb.
I have no success to boot up my 8540w machine (machine stalled on the HP logo)
I went through the wiki and found there some bugs which related to some old firmware (doesn't make any sense)
My laptop relatively new about 2 year old machine bios firmware upgraded a year ago. ( I have no problem to boot with my old Ibm T60)
To rectify the bugs Wiki guided me to:
1. sudo isohybrid.pl -offset 1 archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso
2. sudo dd if=archlinux-2013.06.01-dual.iso of=/dev/sdX
I have successfully boot up but the hope soon died
I'm getting these error messages:
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
ERROR;Failed to mount 'dev/disk/by-label/ARCH_201306"
here a snap shot of entire messages
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Last edited by archlux (2013-06-12 21:52:10)

The filesystem needs to be labeled ARCH_201306. If you dd the iso to the USB, this stays in tact, but it would seem that if you use the method mentioned by the wiki above this filesystem label is not preserved...
Does this machine have UEFI? If so, then you can make a UEFI USB live media and have at it that way. There are instructions on the UEFI wiki page.
FWIW, new and updated firmware does not equate to bug free. I have a Thinkpad E430 that is less than a year old, and the original firmware was not without its bugs. If I have a certain USB stick in the USB 3.0 ports the machine won't get past POST. For a couple bios versions aes-ni was totally borked. There have been other minor issues as well.

USB flash drive 'Read only' problem

Hi everyone,
I have a Trescend USB flash drive 16 Gb, and when I plug it into my desktop (using windows 7 64 bits) I'm able to write or read any file I want. When I plug it into my mid-2010 MacBook Pro 15' w/ lastest version of OS X Lion, the permission are 'Read Only' and I can't seem to be able to change the permission.
How am I suppose to change permission on my Macbook ?
Thanks in advance,
Cheers,
François

I installed it and got this error : now my Macbook wont even see the flash drive...

Install on SDCard/USB stick, toggle read-only filesystem - possible?

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