Flash mount error

[Dazed_75]

NOTE: Before anyone spends serious effort on this, I have resolved the
problem.  Now I would just like to understand what happened.

Today I formatted a flash drive to ext3 (in ubuntu 9.04) and copied some
files to it to save them from a clean install.  Yes, I did a safely remove
(or clean unmount) before removing the drive.  Having completed the clean
install of ubuntu 9.10, I went to restore the files.  Upon insertion, the
flash drive did not appear and (the indicator light on the flash drive
continued to blink for a LONG time).  When I tried to navigate to it with
nautilus (it did show the drive by name) I got an error dialog which said:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 32: mount: wrong fs type, bad
> option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
>        missing codepage or helper program, or other error
>        In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
>        dmesg | tail  or so
>

Here is the relevant stuff from dmesg:

[ 1466.000055] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address
3
[ 1466.163107] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1466.171337] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[ 1466.171541] scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
[ 1466.171612] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[ 1466.171614] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[ 1466.171682] usb-storage: device found at 3
[ 1466.171684] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 1471.170407] usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 1471.200772] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Kingston DataTraveler 2.0
PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
[ 1471.201116] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 1472.859134] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] 7827456 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00
GB/3.73 GiB)
[ 1472.859624] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 1472.859628] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[ 1472.859631] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1472.862636] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1472.862641]  sdb: sdb1
[ 1472.906121] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 1472.906124] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 1565.015001] usb 1-2: USB disconnect, address 3
[ 1565.015138] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[ 1565.015142] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR
driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 1565.015147] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 1488943
[ 1565.015153] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 186110
[ 1565.015156] lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
[ 1565.015180] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[ 1565.015183] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT
driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 1565.015187] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 3564287
[ 1565.015190] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 445528
[ 1565.015193] lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
[ 1565.015207] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 445529
[ 1565.015208] lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
[ 1565.015210] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 445530
[ 1565.015212] lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
[ 1565.015481] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[ 1565.015483] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT
driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 1565.015485] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 1956879
[ 1565.015487] Buffer I/O error on device sdb1, logical block 244602
[ 1565.015489] lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
[ 1565.020036] JBD: recovery failed
[ 1565.020039] EXT3-fs: error loading journal.
larry at triggerfish:~$

Strangely, when I tried the flash drive on my laptop (which just happened to
be running 9.10 from a LiveCD), the drive blinked for quite a while and then
opened normally.  I did another safe remove from there and tried it again in
the desktop where it mounted normally and quickly.  I have NOT checked all
the files.

Now the only thing I can think of is that for an unknown reason the original
write had some kind of error and the thing got recovered in the end by the
journaling system on one of these machines but that took time.  If true, I
would have expected some kind of notification but did not get any.  Oh, BTW,
the dmesg output on the laptop stopped after the equivalent of the
[1472.906124] message above.


-- 
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive.
 - Thomas Jefferson
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