[gcmd-usr] A rather strange g-c experience

[kht-lists]

Hello all,

I do not think I can call this a bug and I am not sure I can reproduce it. (I 
hope not as I had to shut down two virtual machines, un-mount 3 encrypted 
partitions, shut down  Linux, hard shut down my computer as it would not shut 
down, restart the computer, unlock and mount the encrypted partitions, restart 
the VMs etc.)

I am running CentOS 7.6 on a Dell Precision 3620 workstation. I am using the 
Mate desktop and g-c 1.8.1. My task was to copy about 5,000 mp3 files to a 32 
GB USB 2 flash drive. This represents my 450+ CD music collection. The flash 
drive was intended to be used with a Raspberry Pi as a jukebox for my workshop. 
 I formatted the flash drive as fat32 and copied the files using g-c. No 
problem other than it took a LONG time. I then planned to set the immutable 
attribute on the files on the flash drive so that I could not accidentally 
delete any. This is how I have my current juke box, an old laptop, setup. Of 
course I cannot set attributes on fat32 :-(

I then formatted the flash drive as ext4. Naturally the journal feature of ext4 
took up just enough space that the files would not fit.  It then occurred to me 
that I could simply mount the flash drive in the Pi as read only. I again 
formatted the flash drive as fat32 and copied the mp3 files to it. This time I 
used caja (nautilus) as it gives a time remaining guesstimate. A couple of 
hours later the deed was done.

I attempted to access the mounted flash drive with g-c in order to do some 
manipulation and sorting of the files. I clicked on the mount point 
/run/media/ken/music/.  g-c could not access the flash drive. The little 
spinner spun and spun and eventually I had to force quit. I tried unmounting 
and remounting, unmounting removing and reinserting the drive. I could access 
the drive with caja and from a bash terminal. I reformatted the drive, tried 
different file systems, logged out and back in to CentOS, checked the file 
system on the flash drive, everything I could think of short of a reboot. Then 
I attempted to shut down. The monitors went blank but the power light on the 
machine never went out. I finally had to hard power it off.

The machine is back up now, I have mounted the flash drive and am copying the 
files to it using g-c. Obviously this experience was some sort of OS or 
hardware related issue. I find it curious that g-c observed some sort of issue 
with the flash drive and would not access it whereas caja and the terminal 
would.  Has anyone else had any similar anomalies? Just curious.

Ken

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