Re: Help Creating A Bootable USB Disk

[Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):

> So ... in this particular case, dmesg and the like wouldn't have
> caught the error ... but cmp(1) and (presumably) badblocks(8) would.

I'm sure cmp(1) (to explain: a utility to compare files byte by byte,
and don't forget that in Unix a filesystem or entire storage device can
if so desired be treated as a file) made troubleshooting easier.  In the
event of _gross_ failure, the errors or pathological output from 'fdisk
-l /dev/sdc' or 'mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdc1' would be a dead giveway.

Running badblocks(8) on a suspect flash drive would certainly be
(more than) justified before giving it up and consigning it to the
landfill -- even though I'm so used to conserving flash devices' limited
supply of erase-write cycles that I instictively shy away from using the
likes of mkfs or badblocks on them.  Heh.  Obviously, in a situation
where the next step is landfill, you do it anyway.


> Sometimes flash fails in funky way.

Yeah, notoriously.  One's instincts from spining-rust experience are no
good, and maybe actively misleading.  That's one aspect in which the 
lack of sounds and of moving parts is actually a problem, i.e., you
keep expecting to hear repeated re-seeks if there is impending disk
failure, and it's easy to forget that there isn't seeking in the first
place.

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