Thunderbird suddenly causing volume to become read-only
I've been using Thunderbird on linux mint for more than a year. I have the profile and folders on a FAT32 volume ("/media/data"). While away from home, the laptop lost power and it seems like it didn't hibernate per the power options. Since then, when I run Thunderbird, the entire /media/data volume becomes read-only. I can open a terminal window and run sudo mount /media/data -o remount,rw. This resets it for a short time - I can sometimes download some of my mail (multiple accounts), but it will shortly thereafter turn the whole volume read-only again. This problem's persistent across a shutdown, and happens even when Tbird is the only application being run. The volume stays read-write if I'm not running Tbird. The drive has over 70GB free. I also tried this command: sudo mount -o remount,uid=1000,gid=1000,rw /dev/sda8
A search only shows someone having a similar problem from 10 years ago -- http://netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news.narkive.com/DW60PG48/thunderbird-making-fat32-readonly-file-system
My appreciation in advance for any light that can be shed on this!
Ŋuɖoɖo si wotia
After testing, it appears that the problem is resolved.
1 corrupt mail file - deleted and let the mail repopulate from the server.
This 1 corrupt file caused the entire volume to lock when it was accessed - whether by Thunderbird, or when I was trying to copy the volume (and that's how I found the specific file).
I feel bad that I thought it was Thunderbird... but because I had that account set to check for new mail upon startup and again every x minutes, I didn't "see" the activity that was causing the lock.
Xle ŋuɖoɖo sia le goya me 👍 0All Replies (4)
I thought the FAT32 files system was dead. Which is probably why you are having issues finding new occurrences. I doubt we even test on it anymore.
But that advice is as sage as ever. Unless you are running Thunderbird as Root, it does not have the permissions to change the setting.
I suggest you look here. http://askubuntu.com/questions/333287/external-hard-disk-read-only
Try those settings to fix your permission issue.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. Yesterday I decided to copy everything from that volume to another, in preparation for poking at it (maybe using gparted, etc, to recreate the volume). However, while copying, I found that one of the mail files was apparently corrupted (the error message indicated something about splicing, sorry, I didn't copy it down), and flipped the volume to read-only. After confirming this, I deleted that file and continued the copy; no other files presented problems, and it appears that, after rebuilding that account's mail, it's ok. I want to let it run for a few more days before I confirm that was the sole problem.
I probably should've run some utility to check for disk or file errors, but I didn't know the equivalent of chkdsk offhand, and no error messages pointed me toward a bad file (I did try doing "repair folder", but that didn't help).
I'll post in a few days (or sooner, if the issue comes back) so that if there is anyone else with this problem, they'll have a potential solution.
On a follow-up to your comments about FAT32, thanks for the heads-up about it. I'll have to research what to replace it with. It's 1 of 5 partitions on a physical drive. At this point, I can't remember exactly why I thought FAT32 would be the best option for the data drive - maybe I was planning to dual-boot this machine, or some such reason.
Thanks again!
waterfall-hunter said
I did try doing "repair folder", but that didn't help).
Repair folder reads the file and re builds the index (MSF File) that Thunderbird uses to populate the user interface. The name is perhaps a little misleading. It does no read data analysis.
Ɖɔɖɔɖo si wotia
After testing, it appears that the problem is resolved.
1 corrupt mail file - deleted and let the mail repopulate from the server.
This 1 corrupt file caused the entire volume to lock when it was accessed - whether by Thunderbird, or when I was trying to copy the volume (and that's how I found the specific file).
I feel bad that I thought it was Thunderbird... but because I had that account set to check for new mail upon startup and again every x minutes, I didn't "see" the activity that was causing the lock.