[Sorta Solved] Everything USB stopped working

[nonferrousbueller]

Hello,

Been running Mint for a while now, and this just cropped up today.

Inserted a known good SD card and it wount automount. I can't even figure out how to manually mount it. Usually, gThumb pops up to ask if it can transfer images, that didn't work either. Have rebooted, removed, re-inserted, all the usual stuff. The images are currently being transferred successfully onto my netbook through its built-in SD card slot, so I know the data is good.

The complication: last night I installed makeMKV in order to try to rip a Disney DVD of my daughter's (oppressive DRM, I won't rant). Today when I booted up Mint, the GUI wouldn't start, and I was presented with a TTY login. I rebooted, got my GUI, but noticed that the DVD was allegedly still mounted, even though it was no longer in the drive. I opened Nemo as root, manually deleted the DVD from the media folder, but still no luck mounting SD card. I only mention all this as it is the ONLY change I've made to the machine since I last succesfully transferred images from the SD card.

Edit: to recap, plugging in any USB storage device - SD card, USB key, external hard drive - results in nothing. It doesn't show up in the media folder and no popup asks what to do with it.

Any ideas? I'm going to try deleting makeMKV but as I had to build it from source, I'll have to do some Googling to figure out how to remove it (I only know apt-get).

Thanks


Edit: changed subject to more accurately describe issue.

[nonferrousbueller]

I should add it's not mounting _anything_ USB, ignoring my phone and USB key as well.

Other weirdness, possibly not related, is I suddenly don't have any options in shutdown menu. In the "Shutdown this system now?" window, my only option is "Cancel" or wait for 60 seconds to elapse. Really annoying.

Edit: Have lost printer, too. This is dire. Considering an OS reinstall but would need to back up files to - TA DA! - usb hard drive first.

[austin.texas]

Emergency suggestion - backup files to a blank DVD or CD
Next possibility, boot a live Mint DVD, and see if usb hard drive is recognized for backup, or if files can be moved to different partition on internal hard drive. You might have to create a backup partition, or a partition for installation of a new version of Mint - if you want to go that route.

Plug in your usb and look at the result of this command to see any info on your usb devices.
sudo parted -l && sudo blkid -o list

Also, look in /dev/disk to see if the usb is listed. If it is you might be able to create a mount point and mount it.

[nonferrousbueller]

Okay, here's result of

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sudo parted -l && sudo blkid -o list

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Model: TEAC USB HS-SD Card (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf: 7884MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      4194kB  7884MB  7880MB  primary  fat32


device     fs_type label    mount point    UUID
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1  ext4             (not mounted)  6fbe7b0a-88f9-49b1-9fef-def85e618a7f
/dev/sda5  ext4    New Volume (not mounted) 04ae3de5-ce60-40e2-95a9-c70c0b212394
/dev/sda6  swap             (not mounted)  d781e4d8-6c50-474d-811f-ccadb7638b5c
/dev/sdb1  ext4             /              b0b93781-4147-40fc-978c-985b61be20b2
/dev/sdb5  ext4             /home          6cc558e5-4230-4e7f-90fb-0607fcc38d83
/dev/sdb6  swap             <swap>         edb6ea73-35c0-41e2-a577-92b6bf9ac437
/dev/sdf1  vfat             (not mounted)  F009-64A5

So then I tried

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sudo mount /dev/sdf /media/sdcard -t vfat

And got

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wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdf,
       missing codepage or helper program, or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

What should I try next?

It's looking more like I'm going to be doing an OS resintall this weekend - oh joy. I'll probably pop open the external HD and just mount it directly off the SATA to back up data, way easier than trying to back up recent files to DVD.

I'll certainly never install anything from source again. Had success before but this is a royal PITA.

[austin.texas]

When you posted the results of sudo parted -l && sudo blkid -o list the results were incomplete. The parted results did not list sda. It should have been listed.
That is one more thing to add to your list of problems:

Since you have problems when booting from both the hard drive and usb operating systems, that would indicate a hardware i/o problem independent of your os. I hope I am wrong about that.

[nonferrousbueller]

When you posted the results of sudo parted -l && sudo blkid -o list the results were incomplete. The parted results did not list sda. It should have been listed..

Sorry, should have posted the whole thing, I snipped it for brevity. No, sda and sdb are present, that's one less thing I have to worry about! Can post full listing later, currently away from desktop

Edit: Here's the complete output:

Code: Select all

Model: ATA WDC WD10EARS-00Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  40.0GB  40.0GB  primary   ext4            boot
 2      40.0GB  1000GB  960GB   extended
 5      40.0GB  990GB   950GB   logical   ext4
 6      990GB   1000GB  10.3GB  logical   linux-swap(v1)


Model: ATA WDC WD1002FAEX-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      1049kB  30.0GB  30.0GB  primary   ext4            boot
 2      30.0GB  1000GB  970GB   extended
 5      30.0GB  987GB   957GB   logical   ext4
 6      987GB   1000GB  13.1GB  logical   linux-swap(v1)


Model: TEAC USB HS-SD Card (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf: 7884MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      4194kB  7884MB  7880MB  primary  fat32


device                 fs_type   label      mount point                UUID
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1              ext4                 (not mounted)              6fbe7b0a-88f9-49b1-9fef-def85e618a7f
/dev/sda5              ext4      New Volume /media/mirror              04ae3de5-ce60-40e2-95a9-c70c0b212394
/dev/sda6              swap                 (not mounted)              d781e4d8-6c50-474d-811f-ccadb7638b5c
/dev/sdb1              ext4                 /                          b0b93781-4147-40fc-978c-985b61be20b2
/dev/sdb5              ext4                 /home                      6cc558e5-4230-4e7f-90fb-0607fcc38d83
/dev/sdb6              swap                 <swap>                     edb6ea73-35c0-41e2-a577-92b6bf9ac437
/dev/sdf1              vfat                 (not mounted)              F009-64A5

/dev/sda5 is my second drive, which is NOT in a raid, but I backup to it as well as my external before OS reinstalls (my last OS install my external backup died AFTER I WIPED THE MAIN DRIVE). I've spent two futile hours tonight trying to get write privileges on it so I can run my backup. The external drive was plugged in when I ran this command, it did not show up.

Tomorrow night I try a live CD to see if I can xfer data before OS resintall. I wish I was joking when I say that Windows is starting to look good. This is mentally exhausting for me, and I've been "here" a dozen times in the last six years.

[nonferrousbueller]

Sort of solved. I re-installed Mint.

Lessons learned -
1: Installing software from source code can completely hose your system.
2: Brasero can't seem to burn an image onto DVD if you're running under a Live CD.
3: Having your home directory in a separate partition is a very good idea. In my case I was able to back up to other drives, but upon reinstall all my files were already right where I wanted them.
4: If you don't have a second system from which you can create a live USB stick, make one up and keep it handy. My borked system would not write to USB or DVD. If I didn't have my netbook handy, I would have had to call in a pro or wait for my only other Linux buddy to get home from holiday in a week.