read only memory?
 

ok i have a problem....

i have been trying to download some files via transmission, and thedse files were going straight in to "downloads" on the n900

after a few mins i get an error saying something like "can not save file, read only memory"

because the file initially started to download, the full amount of memory has been allocated, and so i went to file manager and tfried to delete the file

i cant even delete the file now as i get the same read only memory error. how do i fix this?

what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

My N900 worked perfectly until just now

yesterday i placed several avi files on to the internal memory and all the films played really well

now, i cant move, copy, edit, delete any files, i just get a "read-only file system" error

none of my videos play, i just get an "unsupported media format" error - even though these same files played fine yesterday

please, help me

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

tried nokia or ovi suite to remove the avi files?

Re: read only memory?
 

1. install rootsh package (from Extras-devel)
2. start x-terminal
3. type "root" (or "sudo gainroot")
4. go to folder where file stored (use "cd foldername", for move folder up use "cd ..")
5. type "rm FileName"

good luck

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Have you tried removing them as root, and what do mount and df show?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

no, when i get home to connect to pc i will try this.

does it sound like my internal memory is corrupted? if so is that something a re flash would fix, or is the phone fooked?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

DannStarr, please don't start two threads with the same question. Threads merged.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

try this:
1. install rootsh package (from Extras-devel)
2. start x-terminal
3. type "root" (or "sudo gainroot")
4. go to folder where file stored (use "cd foldername", for move folder up use "cd ..")
5. type "rm FileName"

good luck

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

sorry qgil :)

how do i get to copy and paste the text in terminal so i can show the output of mount etc?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

You don't need Extras-devel. Don't enable it if you don't know what you're doing.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Press the pointer icon, but my xterm doesn't show it before I do something first.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

I can highlight it, but my ctrl and c doesnt seem to do anything

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Plug the N900 into your PC & try to delete it through the N900 driver.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Ctrl-C interrupts the current process. In the terminal, use the graphical menu to copy and paste.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

I had a similar problem which I fixed by connecting the phone to my linux machine and running fsck.vfat.

I first turned off the phone, plugged in the USB cable, turned on the phone so that the internal and external flash drives automounted.

After backing up my data, I did a "df" to identify the internal flash. It turned out to be /dev/sdc in my case.

I therefore ran "sudo fsck.vfat -a /dev/sdc" three or four times (until no error/correction messages showed up) with the device mounted.

Finally I unmounted and rebooted the phone and everything worked as it should:-)

If you're using Windows I unfortunately don't know how to do something similar.

Best wishes

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

I don't know how the N900's keyboard or Terminal is.. but Ctrl+Shift+C is usually the copy on a desktop Linux terminal window. Ctrl+Shift+V and Ctrl+Insert are typical paste commands...

Maybe these work?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

ok guys, thanks for all your help.... finally got the copy and paste working in the terminal too :)

i decided on a reboot... initially didnt fix it
second reboot seems to have done the trick, im all workin fine again.

very strange thing to have happen, maybe somehow the internal flash memory temporarily crashed for some reason?

i dont know, i didnt like it, but im fixed for now

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

WAIT.

you posted here without rebooting?

omg.

who votes for iq-test to enter the forum?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

No.

I rebooted once, and I still had the same problem. I did some reading here, posted here (twice) searched my device endlessly for some kind of option to set the "read only" memory to read / write without joy, tried moving / copying / deleting various files over and over, tried playing various movies... all without success.

I then rebooted a SECOND time. Everything worked. That all ok by you?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Furthermore, even if a reboot 'fixes' it there's still an underlying problem that's worth putting some effort into understanding.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Thanks go out to filologen.

I attempted to back up my 900, using the backup utility on the device. The process apparently failed at some point, and I began getting a "memory is read only" error. filologen's tip above appears to have taken care of the problem.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Ok, same happened to me.
I tried to download files (torrents) with Transmission. For some reason, the whole app froze so totally that I had to reboot the whole device. After this, I restarted the Transmission and got the same "Read-only file system error..".

I then went to Xterm, gainrooted and tried to remove the files with no luck. I also tried via the file manager with the same result.

Next step was to reboot the device again - still no luck with the above steps.. I then rebooted the device once again after which I was able to remove the files using the file manager.

I _think_ this might have something to do with the fact that
1) You first have files downloading in Transmission
2) You then for whatever reason reboot the device
3) --> The files you were downloading are marked as read only
4) It requires not one, but two reboots to fix!

This might be a b*tch to reproduce, so if anyone else has had similar experiences please comment so we can open up a bug for this..


EDIT: Might not be related to Transmission at all if there are similar problems with backup also..?
//Laiska

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

I had this issue with a download in gPodder. It seems the vfat is very fragile on the Maemo. If there is any issue, the system switches to read-only mode.

I fixed it as root by unmounting the MyDocs partition, then doing a fsck -a on the partition. Then a reboot, but a mount of MyDocs should do too.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Ok, today this problem came to me too. I've opened video in media player, which caused N900 to crash so hardly that it rebooted itself (no error message, no application freezing, just instant reboot without any question).

When it came back to life, everything seemed to be allright and worked properly. Then i tried to delete folder located in /Music/some_artist/ - voila, simple "Operation failed" error message. I went to root with filemanager and noticed that whole "Music" folder disappeared, but because no space was freed, the files (about 10GB in 2500 files) have been somewhere. When I listed files in console, I've noticed folder named "._ďŞ" in MyDocs - probably my original "Music" folder, but because of the weird characters in it's name i was unable to list anything within.
Now my favorite part comes - whole .documents directory war read-only, despite it's permission were set to 0777. That means no document editing, no camera photo or video saving etc.

So i tried the procedure mentioned here:

1) unmounted MyDocs when logged to console as root
2) ran fsck -a on /home/user/MyDocs and waited (for about 70 minutes)...

When completed, I've rebooted phone and everything seemed fine, except that my Music folder (which appeared back in root by the way) was empty and all files from that folder were placed in root and renamed (=useless). So the result? All music gone.

Well, I'm pretty sure that this isn't problem with certain application, but with the filesystem itself, which seems to be quite unstable. For me the only solution how to avoid this in future is to repartition inner memory to ext3 while leaving FAT32 on memory card to keep the camera working... Nice.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

What is unmounting? How do you unmount?
Can this process be done without connecting to a pc?
This is a real issue.. Has anyone found any other solution since?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Follow filologen's instructions, works for me and I have been dealing with this since I got the device.

After transferring files it must be important to properly unmount device. I used to just pull the cord when I thought things were clear, but no more...

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

the system is indeed very fragile. lots of people seem to have this problem. a few weeks ago i copied a file to my n900 memory from pc. and for some reason it crashed half way. after that the whole phone was read only. There should be a more easy way to get the system back on its feet. like an option where you need the phone security code to get things back how they were.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Not sure if my error is the same as the OP but thought it close enough to post on this thread, apologies if not the same....

Plugged my N900 into the USB to draw power for charging. Clicked on the Mass Storage Device option then I end up with the following warning message across the middle of the screen:

When I open file manager on the device I see that the memory card Video directory has a question mark for an icon and a size of -1KB reported. My suggestion is therefore that the filesystem on the memory card has been corrupted.

Any thoughts on this one?

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Ok peeps, problem appears to be solved, it was indeed a corrupt filesystem on the memory card. For the person asking about how to fix this on Windows it is possible (as in the office so that's all there is). Just simply right click on the drive and tell Windows to scan for errors. Takes forever but did seem to do the job in my case.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Did the try for me thanks.

1) Backup
2) Copy Backup somewhere else than on the phone
3) Reboot
4) It found the problem in less than 1 minute !

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

This worked for me..Thanks for the code.

Re: read only memory?
 

To scared to root my phone. Actually. I am too scared to do anything in xterminal. stil studying a noob tutorial on it but this seems to be a cool noob fix for other folks like me

I had this exact same issue. I rebooted like 4 or 5 times and it works just fine now. i can edit/delet/move/copy or what ever in the file manager now. also those same bit torrents that once showed the same error msg in red are now downloading just fine. if prob persists i will update

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

just had this problem tonight.

tried the umount fsck solution but it didnt i still had the issue after trying it directly on the phone, and hooking the phone up to my linux box.

after rebooting my phone about 4 times it seems to have solved the issue.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

same problem but can not get red of it plz help

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

transmission isn't really working on this device. u want to try ctorrent and the flashlite patch. It can't read udp and dead tracker atm but u can solve this by editing the torrent with www.torrenteditor.com. also u want to tweak nr_requests of the filesystem to optimize throughput or bandwith and not the speed of the filesystem. u want to search for the user nightfire who posts a solution to massive optimize throughput in demanding i/o situations. u want to try my tune-up tools too because it do a similar thing.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Could be a corrupted file system.
Try the following from X-Terminal

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Try this link below hope you will get some idea:
http://nokia-n900.com/?s=ussd&x=0&y=0

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Im have had this problem too. Solved by rebooting several times, then tried to copy files from computer to phone via USB cable, rebooted one more time, and then tried to copy some files from SD card to phone storage and it worked. :)

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Ive had a transmission, read-only file system problem for a week or too, found this today and once I had entered the commands it was sorted straight away.

root
umount /dev/mmcblk0p1
fsck.vfat -aw /dev/mmcblk0p1
reboot

I just copied and pasted that to the terminal. Ive also saved it to a notepad incase I have the same problem in the future.

Re: what is going on??? ("read-only file system" error)
 

Hello. I find it difficult to have a long hard phone when I delete or add another file will show the message "read-only error)

* Vanyal the flash file (mmc) makes it difficult to found the first error code can you please help to solve these problems
Thanks
http://s1.picofile.com/file/7476146020/Untitled.png
:(