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I have been using rsync over ssh (cygwin) for some time now from a Windows 2003 Server to back up files to a Debian box which has a USB hard drive attached.

The files are rsynced directly to the USB hard drive which is mounted as /media/backup on the Debian box.

The backup is run from a scheduled task on the Windows box and the stdout and stderr are output to files which are emailed to me after the backup completes.

Every now and again I see errors in the stderr file like:

rsync: failed to set times on "/media/backup/[some file name] ": Read-only file system (30)

for every file that has changed since the last backup.

When I see this error I unmount the drive and remount. That resolves the problem.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this error occurs? i.e. Why would a USB drive become read-only once every couple of months?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The filesystem is being made read-only in response to some error in interacting with it. You should see something come up in dmesg and/or /var/log/messages (or equivalent) before the rsync starts complaining.

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What file system is on the USB drive? If it is NTFS, it might not have been cleanly unmounted. So the default is generally to mount it read-only until you have run a disk check or until the unclean mount flag is cleared. (Not sure what the flag is actually called).

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  • The USB drive is formatted ext3.
    – Stacey Richards
    Jul 9, 2009 at 11:54
  • Hmmmm... I would look at dmesg as chaos said. Maybe something like a journal abort, very well could be a bad drive if you are getting those. Or maybe the USB cable keeps getting yanked.
    – Kyle Brandt
    Jul 9, 2009 at 11:56

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