Tuesday, June 24, 2014

cp to/from a usb from terminal

With a USB drive attached to a desktop, I attempt to copy some files from the desktop to the USB HDD. I receive "filesystem does not support symbolic links" errors and can't copy. This becomes maddening because I have no symbolic links in the files to be copied nor am I attempting to establish any symbolic links. In short, I'm asking it to copy, it's responding by claiming I'm asking something else, and that it can't do that other thing. What can we verify to help ourselves troubleshoot this mess?
  • Make sure the file owners are the same, eg the same UID.
  • Double check that you can fstab various MSOFT file systems
$ cat /etc/fstab
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ext2 uid=1000,noauto,user 0 0

$ parted /dev/sdb -l
Model: USB DISK 2.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1032MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 1032MB 1031MB primary

Is this an fstab problem?