cfdisk freeze

lolilolicon · 2009-08-17 18:29:15

I used dd to write the new arch image to my usb stick, which was NTFS.

$ sudo dd bs=8M if=arch08.img of=/dev/sdd

Then I did, $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdd , pressed p for a list of partitions, and it said something about head blocks not matched or something (I don't remember clearly, but it said "not linux?")

Well, I thought maybe I did something wrong, maybe I should rewrite the partition table to linux first? (I really don't know.)
So I just typed

$ sudo cfdisk /dev/sdd

I deleted the partition sdd1 which contained the arch image. selected the whole sdd as type Linux and flagged it as bootable. Then selected write partition table and started to wait.

It's been a looooooong time since the following message appeared:

Are you sure you want to write the partition table to disk? (yes or no): yes
Writing partition table to disk...

Is cfdisk freezing?

I feel really stupid. I don't think it's good to kill cfdisk but I tried to sudo pkill cfdisk, and it remains...

Writing partition table to disk... What?

nathanpc · 2009-08-17 18:39:33

If your pen-drive capacity is large this process will use some time.

lolilolicon · 2009-08-17 18:47:46

No, it's only 2GB and I believe it should have been finished even if it were 200GB.

Strange!
/dev/sdd and /dev/sdd1 are gone! Now there are /dev/sde /dev/sde1

And cfdisk is still alive and freezing.

Edit:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sde

Disk /dev/sde: 2063 MB, 2063597568 bytes
95 heads, 61 sectors/track, 695 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 5795 * 512 = 2967040 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1   *           1         695     2013732   83  Linux

So I think the partition table is already written by cfdisk, but

$ ps -e | grep cfdisk
 8953 pts/0    00:00:00 cfdisk

What do I do?

Edit 2:

I already unplugged the USB stick , tried $ sudo kill -9 PID_of_cfdisk, it remains.
Replugged the USB stick and ls /dev/sd? shows it's /dev/sde.

cfdisk is now a ghost process? How do I kill it? Why is it there?
And why is the USB drive detected as sde but not sdd? Does it mean /dev/sdd is still virtually used by cfdisk?

dmesg | tail -500 | less

and I found several repeats of this block of message before the drive is unplugged.

Call Trace:
 [<c019d061>] ? find_get_pages_tag+0x61/0x180
 [<c019e5d6>] ? wait_on_page_writeback_range+0x76/0x140
 [<c03d2570>] ? schedule+0x20/0x50
 [<c03d4a95>] ? rwsem_down_failed_common+0xa5/0x1c0
 [<c03d4c28>] ? rwsem_down_read_failed+0x28/0x48
 [<c03d4c7b>] ? call_rwsem_down_read_failed+0x7/0xc
 [<c03d3e49>] ? down_read+0x19/0x30
 [<c01f29ac>] ? __sync_inodes+0x4c/0xc0
 [<c01f2a36>] ? sync_inodes+0x16/0x50
 [<c01f601e>] ? do_sync+0x1e/0x90
 [<c01f60e5>] ? sys_sync+0x15/0x30
 [<c0103c73>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28
INFO: task cfdisk:8953 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
cfdisk        D 01bf0797     0  8953  30046
 d1499f14 00200086 f6c22c94 01bf0797 d1499f14 c019d061 0000000e 00000001
 00000000 67e03e17 d1499f1c 00000000 d1499f10 f6c22c98 c0544ac0 e12bf1a8
 7f04550f 0001549c c0544ac0 c05411a4 e12bf1a8 c0544ac0 f737fdc0 0001549c

Edit 3:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sde

Disk /dev/sde: 2063 MB, 2063597568 bytes
95 heads, 61 sectors/track, 695 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 5795 * 512 = 2967040 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1   *           1         129      372455   83  Linux
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
     phys=(0, 1, 1) logical=(0, 1, 3)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(46, 94, 61) logical=(128, 52, 41)

IIRC, it was this same output when I formerly did dd on the NTFS USB stick... Is it fine?
>> This looks fine. I can mount /dev/sde1 and see the content of the .img. Only cfdisk is still there but I don't have any idea why and how to get rid of it.

Last edited by lolilolicon (2009-08-17 20:11:16)

djszapi · 2009-08-19 22:56:01

Hello lolilolicon!

1. "Then I did, $ sudo fdisk /dev/sdd , pressed p for a list of partitions, and it said something about head blocks not matched or something (I don't remember clearly, but it said "not linux?")" Did you try to replug it after this operation ?

2. sudo dd bs=8M if=arch08.img of=/dev/sdd should do the purpose for you in fact. Is your usb storage okay ? Can you do a dd with other img file e.g. ?

Arch Linux

#1 2009-08-17 18:29:15

cfdisk freeze

#2 2009-08-17 18:39:33

Re: cfdisk freeze

#3 2009-08-17 18:47:46

Re: cfdisk freeze

#4 2009-08-19 22:56:01

Re: cfdisk freeze

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