[PLUG] Device is read-only

[John Jason Jordan]

I should know how to do this, but I don't. Or maybe it can't be fixed.

The computer is a Thinkpad T61 with Fedora 14, x86_64. The device is a
Transcend 32 GB SDHC card. According to dmesg it mounts automatically
when inserted at /media/FC30-3DA9/. The filesystem is vfat, which is
how it was formatted when I bought it. Any attempt to copy files to it
results in "the device is read-only."

The card has a slider on the side to lock the card, reminiscent of the
slider switch on ancient floppies. But it doesn't matter which position
I place the switch in, I cannot copy files to it, either with Nautilus
or from the command line as jjj or as root. According to Nautilus I am
the owner of the device.

As root I can umount it and then mount it again. But if I mount it with
the -w switch it gives me an error message that the device is read-only:

[root at Devil8 media]# mkdir SDC
[root at Devil8 media]# mount -w /dev/mmcblk1 /media/SDC/
mount: block device /dev/mmcblk1 is write-protected but explicit `-w'
	flag given

And curiously, even thought I told it to mount the device
at /media/SDC/ it is mounted at /media/FC30-3DA9. From a plain mount
command after mounting it as above I get:

/dev/mmcblk1p1 on /media/FC30-3DA9 type vfat
(ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks,uid=500,gid=500,shortname=mixed,
	dmask=0077,utf8=1,showexec,flush)

Maybe the device is defective, like the slider switch is not unlocking
it? Maybe I don't know what I'm doing?