__/ [ lkrubner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Monday 18 September 2006 03:35 \__
> I'm not sure where I should post this question. I was trying to move 6
> gigs of info from my Windows machine to my Redhat E3 computer. I don't
> know much about Linux. I moved the data from my Windows machine to an
> external USB harddrive. I then plugged the harddrive into my Linux
> computer. I opened a shell terminal window and su to root. Then I
> mounted the harddrive. Then I use the copy command to start moving over
> huge directories full of stuff. It worked for awhile, but then quite
> with an "Input/Output" error. The cp command never returned the command
> prompt. What is one suppose to do in those situations? I closed the
> terminal window and opened another, but I could not reconnect with the
> harddrive. I could not umount or mount it, either. I got "Device is
> busy."
Hi,
This is not the most suitable newsgroup for technical questions, but I'll
have a go.
First of all, do you happen to know what filesystem the extrenal hard-drive
uses for storage? There are different filename conventions (among other
things) that may lead to issues and inconsistencies in terms of what's
transferable and whether the files preserve their state (name, attributes,
relationships can be lost or changed in the process). If you didn't have any
issues before (I am assuming you used to transfer files just fine), there
are various possibilities:
1. Some file has been created or modified and it clogs things up or causes
things everything to hang. This should usually result in some verbosity
though--one that indicates what has gone wrong and whether it's fatal to the
process (transfer stopped) or just a warning. Among the possible issues:
character internationalisation, symbols such as a colon, slashes and spaces
(a rarity), filename length, path length...
2. There is a corruption in the filesystem
3. There is a physical error somewhere
If your hard-drive is operated from an external source of power, switch it
off and then on again. This will have it revert to a 'healthy' state. An
outage, for example, recently led to my hard-drive not being detectable
(needed a kick for the first time /ever/).
If what you meant to say is that /cp/ worked for a while before hanging (i.e.
that's the first time you ever do this), then it's a different case
altogether.
Does your RedHat computer have a 2.4 kernel? The 2.6 kernel should mount your
USB hard-drive automatically and handle it very gracefully.
Hope it helps,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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