Karmic: how to delete /dev/sr1

[Clay Weber]

On Saturday 06 March 2010 03:04:20 pm Alan Dacey Sr. wrote:
> On Saturday 06 March 2010 01:58:09 pm Mirto Silvio Busico wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > I have an external USB hard disk from Western Digital (model My
> > Passport).
> > 
> > This unit comes with two partitions, that I see and I can mount:
> >     * /dev/sr1 that is understood as a CD
> >     * /dev/sdb1 that is a normal NTFS partition
> > 
> > If I mount the partitions "mount" says:
> > 
> > ...
> > /dev/sr1 on /media/WD SmartWare type udf
> > (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,uid=1000)
> > /dev/sdb1 on /media/My Passport type fuseblk
> > (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096)
> > 
> > The problem is tah I'm not able to destroy, eliminate, kill :-) the
> > /dev/sr1 partition
> > 
> > With the partitions unmounted, nor "gparted" nor "fdisk" see the damned
> > partition
> > 
> > Trying "sudo fdisk /dev/sr1" I see:
> > 
> > mirto at msb02:~/script$ sudo fdisk /dev/sr1
> > Impossibile scrivere la tabella delle partizioni.
> > Nota: la dimensione del settore è 2048 (non 512)
> > Il dispositivo non contiene né una tabella delle partizioni DOS valida,
> > né una disklabel Sun, SGI od OSF
> > Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x0c58531d.
> > Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
> > After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.
> > 
> > Attenzione: il flag 0x0000 non valido della tabella delle partizioni 4
> > verrà corretto con w(rite)
> > 
> > Comando (m per richiamare la guida): p
> > 
> > Disco /dev/sr1: 700 MB, 700448768 byte
> > 255 testine, 63 settori/tracce, 21 cilindri
> > Unità = cilindri di 16065 * 2048 = 32901120 byte
> > Identificativo disco: 0x0c58531d
> > 
> > Dispositivo Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > 
> > Comando (m per richiamare la guida):
> > 
> > 
> > How can I kill this partition?
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> >     Mirto
> > 
> > P.S. BTW I use Karmic 64 bit with updates of 4 March
> 
> This is an odd day.  I was about to ask the very same thing.  I saved this
> as a draft to send after I tried one last thing:
>   I got a free usb stick that has a read-only, write-protected partition
> that mounts as a cd.  I find this very annoying and have been trying to
> get rid of it for months.  I either am phrasing my google searches wrong
> or am using the wrong words.  Whatever I find is all about actual cd
> drives and not about a usb stick.  I can play with the ownership and such
> but I can't find a way to get to get it to mount it as something like
> /dev/sdh1.  It always mounts as /dev/sr1  It is always non-writable so I
> can't kill the partition.
>   U3 tools do not work.
>   Does anybody know where to find out how to do this?
> 
> From what I can see, if it is not a U3 partition, you are out of luck
> unless you send it away to a company that can do it.  The secret U3 tools
> are out on the torrent sites.  I will be trying to use some other tools I
> found, will reply with results.

You may need to use dd to overwrite the partiton table/mbr of the drive, but 
this would not be good if you ever wanted to use that Passport drive and its 
tools on a Mac or Windows box. If the partition is similar to the U3 junk 
found on some flash drives, it will be pesky to impossible to remove.

The better way would be to have your system ignore it in Linux. This bug 
report shows that this issue has been recognized and patched in Lucid,

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udisks/+bug/474790

 from reading it, it looks like you could use the Lucid udev rules files 
mentioned in the report to do this in Karmic. Clear directions can be found 
here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1381228


-- 
Clay Weber
http://kubuntuforums.net
http://flyballmaine.com
http://emacdogsports.com