VeraCrypt / Forums / Technical Topics: Can´t write on mounted volume any more

Anonymous - 2015-01-18

Hi,

i´m using VeryCrypt for a long time now (version 1.0e). Everything was fine until today.

When i try to add a new file to the mounted volume, Windows 7 everytime comes up with an error that the medium is write-protected (read only).

I already tried to remove the write-protection in Windows 7 but it says that it is not possible. So i think the problem must be caused by VeraCrypt...

Do you know that problem? What can i do to solve the problem?

Thanks for your help!

Regards,
Stefanie

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Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-01-18

Hi Stefanie,

VeraCrypt will not change its behavior on its own so there must some external parameter that is causing this.
First, did you check that the volume is not mounted as read-only?
Is the mounted volume a container or a partition? If it is a container file, did you check that the medium where the container file resides is not read-only?
Are you using a Symantec antivirus (like Norton)? There is an issue with Symantec products and they are working on a fix and meanwhile they propose to mount volumes as readonly. So maybe they pushed an update that forces this.
Can you give attach a screenshot of VeraCrypt properties dialog of the mounted volume? Also, a screenshot of the Windows Explorer properties dialog of the mounted drive would be helpful.

Thank you in advance for sharing this information that will help understand what is happening to your machine.

Last edit: Mounir IDRASSI 2015-01-18

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- Anonymous - 2015-03-08
  
  I have the same problem with one of my hard disks but on Arch linux. Everything was fine till now, but at this point it starts to be mounted as read only. Don't know why. I tried to unmount drive, change ownership and permission with chown and chmod...but it looks like this is locked by veracrypt - i don't have selected "read only" option.
  
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  - Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-08
    
    Thank you for reporting this.
    The original poster for the issue on Windows didn't come back with more information which is frustrating...Anonymous posters tends to forget to give feedback.
    
    When you display the volume properties using VeraCrypt, does it show that it is read-only?
    
    If yes, then since you didn't select the "read only" option either through the command line or the password dialog, the only left possibility is that VeraCrypt receives an Read-only filesystem error when trying to open the volume (error codes are: EROFS, EACCES or EPERM) as you can see in the code: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/code/ci/master/tree/src/Core/Unix/CoreUnix.cpp#l427
    
    In this case, can you check your system logs to see if the kernel loads the drive as read only or if there are any errors linked to this drive.For example, some RAID 1 drives can revert to read-only after rebooting (you can many issues linked to this on the internet). Are you using RAID?
    
    On the other hand, if VeraCrypt properties dialog doesn't indicate that the volume is read-only, then there maybe an issue with fuse itself...but this is less probable.
    
    I tend to think that there is an issue with the drive itself, either because of RAID issue or any other problem. You can check the state of the drive using different tools available to check how it is mounted by the kernel.
    
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Anonymous - 2015-03-09

Hello,

I have just had the very same problem: all my file containers are mounted read-only.
This happens on a MAC and also on a PC.
This makes the whole thing unusable.
I don't see any option to trigger this read-only status. Nor I have done anything to mount the volumes in this status.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

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- Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-09
  
  Can you please check the volume properties of the volume in VeraCrypt? Does it show ReadOnly = Yes?
  Where are the file containers residing? Is is a NAS, local disk, RAID disk?
  
  In PC, are you able to create a regular file on the disk where the containers are located?
  
  Thank you for your answers as none of the previous posters answered my questions which is regrettable.
  
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Anonymous - 2015-03-09

Yes, it says ReadOnly = Yes
In PC I can create and delete files in the part of the disk that is not encrypted (= not in the containers).
I use an external USB drive of 3 Tb, with 5 containers.
Never had this problem before.

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Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-09

Thanks for the answers.
So you can create files on the same partition where the containers are located? In this case, can you create a test file container at the same place of the other containers?
Does this succeed to does VeraCrypt report an error?
If the creation of this test container on the same place as the other containers succeeds, what happens when you mount it? it is also reported as read-only?

Sorry for these questions but I'm trying to understand what it happening.
As I explained above, the code will only mount as read-only if there is an write-access error to the file.

By the way, how do you mount your containers? Directly or through Favorites?

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Anonymous - 2015-03-20

fwiw - I had the same problem with my newly created container being read only on Linux. No log errors; not mounted with r/o options. If I executed an su command I could r/w to the container (in my case /media/container). chown myuser:myuser /media/container fixed my problem.

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Anonymous - 2015-03-20

Under linux Nautilus seems to be the problem saying it's read-only while I can read/write using the terminal just fine, not even needed to chown. Veracrypt still says in Volume Properties that it's read-only though.

So what's going on that even though the permissions are fine, file managers like Nautilus say it's read-only and refuse to write to it? Also on Arch Linux here by the way.

Using Windows it works fine :)

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Anonymous - 2015-03-20

Alright, it works for me now. It seems that restarting Nautilus is all it takes, not sure if deleting ~/.config/nautilus had anything to do with it as it only contains a small text file with irrelevant information (icon positions). Possibly restarting Nautilus after mounting would be enough.

Also check your mount options!

rw

uid set to your user id

gid set to your group id

fmask and dmask to 0077 (or 0007 if you want your group to have access too)
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Anonymous - 2015-03-20

Okay, be careful! This is NOT fixed, changes are not written to the container though your filemanager might let you write to it. Upon closing the container and re-opening it your changes are LOST.

Somewhere down the line Veracrypt still doesn't write the volume read-write as it's still reported ReadOnly = Yes in the volume properties.

If this isn't fixed soon I'm dropping Veracrypt as it's simply unusable. Might have a go at LUKS.

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- Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-20
  
  I was writing an answer for the above post when you were posting your own message.
  
  My post below gives some explanations.
  
  I'll try to fix the mess caused by mkfs.ext2 and alike.
  
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- Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-20
  
  Last comment: actually on Linux, VeraCrypt uses dm-crypt to handle volumes once they are mounted. So Read/Write operations are handled by dm-crypt.
  
  If you are losing data with VeraCrypt, then you will also lose data with LUKS since it is based on dm-crypt.
  
  Not a lot of people are aware that VeraCrypt on Linux only handling unlocking the volume while delegating all read/write operations to dm-crypt.
  
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Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-20

Thank you for the feedback. Actually, another user posted a complementary analysis here: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/technical/thread/e7e51852/

He discovered like you that this is due to a file owner issue and that it happens only if you choose to format using Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4. Since VeraCrypt calls the external programs mkfs.ext2, mkfs.ext3 and mkfs.ext4 for this,this means that there programs change the owner of the file to root which causes the issue.

I will try to implement a fix in VeraCrypt in order to correct the owner of the file once the Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 formatting is finished.

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Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-22

I have posted an answer to the other discussion talking about the same subject: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/technical/thread/e7e51852#c9a3

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Mounir IDRASSI - 2015-03-23

I have committed a fix for this issue on Linux: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/code/ci/5ad42a1dad09c92672bd964c8099a0831f39a300/

You can the version 1.0f-2-Beta that contains this fix from the Nightly Builds folder: https://sourceforge.net/projects/veracrypt/files/VeraCrypt%20Nightly%20Builds/

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

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Denis Smalley - 2017-02-26

How do I go about installing the Beta update? I have downloaded the dmg file but double clicking on it doesn't work. I assume there is a terminal command but I am pretty Linux illiterate on the terminal.

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Anonymous - 2017-04-30

This issues persists on VeraCrypt 1.19. For no reason I can think of, the volume gets mounted as read only. The volume previously had mounted as rw and I can't see the reason why it doesn't now.

4.10.11-1-ARCH x64

Despite me trying to change the mount options from what I get after mounting it

ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096

to what my other veracrypt HD get's mounted as (by default)

rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096

Nothing changes.

Thank you

Last edit: Anonymous 2017-04-30
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- Anonymous - 2017-04-30
  
  Just in case someone else comes into this problem in the future. If the filesystem appears to be damaged due to improper dismounting the volume does get mounted as RO. Try to repair the fs. I used windows veracrypt version, repaired the filesystem and then the volume got mounted properly on arch.
  
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Buggy M. - 2017-05-10

Good evening everyone! The very same issue appeared on my encrypted USB: It appeared as read-only even after removing the read-only flag, and all of a sudden VeraCrypt does not accept the password anymore, of which I am sure is 100% correct. @Mounir IDRASSI, what is going on here? I now always get the following message when trying to restore the volume header backup:

The file system is read-only. VeraCrypt::File::Open:232

I see some relation to this thread, where I hope you'll answer as well:
https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/general/thread/b1fc82c1/?limit=25#3636

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Richard Pinter - 2017-05-14

Hello Folks,

So I have the same or similar issue like you. I was to blame windows 10 to f up my drive, as it happened earlier. I am on manjaro (arch derivative) and I didnt notice the little lock sign on the folders after mounting the the veracrypt volume till yesterday. It was mounted as read only although I didnt ask to do so. I tried check and repair filesystem and then I got an error message mentioning xterm. So I quickly looked up if I have it installed and bang. It seems veracrypt needs it while mounting, which is odd because I have terminal installed. Evrything is back to normal. I hope it helps. Have a nice day folks!

Update: It is still read only. There was a huge update yesterday for manjaro and also I updated the kernel from the lts 4.9 to 4.11 so I tried the old kernel but no change. :(

Update: I booted win 10 and mounted the volume and then I tried in linux and everything works as normal. All I can think that I might had a dirty shutdown, I will definitely dismount it before shutdown/restart.

Last edit: Richard Pinter 2017-05-14

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George - 2017-07-26

Hello,

Here a "me too" message. I have been using Veracrypt since TrueCrypt stopped. I am using it for irregular manual backups to an USB harddisk, which I then store at work (besides the more frequent backups I keep at home on an unencrypted disk). The backup copies files using rsync.

Today I wanted to create a new backup. About halfway the process, the "file system is read-only" errors started appearing. When I checked the volume properties in VeraCrypt, it showed Read-Only: No.

Upgrading VeraCrypt from 1.16 to 1.21 did not help. My OS is Linux Mint 18.2, kernel 4.8.0-53-generic.

I would very much like to see a solution to this problem.

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Chris Burtner - 2017-10-23

"me too."
About two weeks ago veracrypt stopped being able to write to volumes. I made new volumes, same issue, I uninstalled and reinstalled veracrypt, same issue. Macbook pro High Sierra. I think it is a computer setting, but don't know where to start.
Chris

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M.Hoyer - 2018-01-17

Same problem here. (Win7-64) VC Container on USB Drive (exFat) - marker "read only" not set in VC.
Worked well over long time, suddenly mounted VC volume was marked as read only. 8-(
Result of the first check of the USB drive resulted in everything ok - copying files to USB drive was possible. On a second test - copying files to USB resulted in a warn message with hint to use ChkDsk.
After dosing so (of course ChkDsk said everything is ok, no action taken) USB drive itself was writable again and after mounting the VC container from the USB drive was working normally and I could write data to the container again.
Not a real workaround, but somehow it worked for me.

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Can´t write on mounted volume any more - Error read-only

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Can´t write on mounted volume any more - Error read-only

Can´t write on mounted volume any more - Error read-only

Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid

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Can´t write on mounted volume any more - Error read-only