SAM Linux Desktop - Community Forums

After working initially, now when I insert a pendrive, I get the error message:

...and the drive is inaccessible. The machine is a Dell Optiplex GX1 500S, P3/500, 128MB ram.

Any thoughts on what's gone kerflooey on me?

look here I found it after posting your error message in google.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/...os-548797/

Greetz
Yogibaer

All that LinuxQuestions forum post is, is someone else listing the same error message, and not getting an answer. The rest of the thread is only tangentally relevant.

I attempted to fsck the volume, and the support for vfat/msdos seems to be missing, i.e. fsck.msdos is AWOL. How do I get it back? Short of total reinstall, that is?

Stupid question, is there a mechanical lock at the stick which accidentally closed the access to the stick. Otherwise I have no further clue what you could do. Unfortunately.

And, as a remark, as I am German and not a native English speaker some of your words are unknown for me. AWOL I don't know as well as kerflooey. http://dict.leo.org which is a standard dictionary for me didn't have it in.

My apologies, I was using slang. "kerflooey" isn't a real word, it's more of an onomatopoeia -- a description of a sound, like BANG! or KA-BOOM! -- a minor explosion, in other words. Not a literal explosion, but a figurative one. AWOL is an acronym for Absent With-Out Leave, commonly used by the armed services to describe a missing service member.

As far as I can tell, none of the several different models of USB flash drives that have been tried on this particular computer have manual write-protect, and the same devices work just fine in other computers...

Well, I'll just leave this message out here in case someone else notices. If I can't figure it out, I'll just blow SAM away in favor of some other distro (probably Zenwalk). I liked having SAM, because the other two machines at the coffeehouse are running PCLinuxOS (the 1GHz machines referenced in my sig) and that lends a certain amount of consistency. But if flash drives are not going to work, I can't leave it out for public use...

But all normal flashdrives are working, normally. At least til now. Any time I use a memorystick, no problem at least at my 3 machines. I see your point, but as you have searched the net as well, you cannot find an answer. What's about the two pclos-machines. Do they recognize the pen-drive? And are you sure that the USB-port is working properly?

Greetz
Yogibaer

Try this first

Could it be an update problem?

The last "solution" is: Re-install. Several people state in the pclos forums that after a re-install the problems vanished.

Yeah, I (long since) ended up doing the reinstall, given that the machine was a public coffeeshop internet terminal with nothing permanent that needed to be kept, and sure sure enough it solved the problem. Still no insight into what caused the problem, but those articles look prtty good. I'll keep them bookmarked for future reference.