Veracrypt 1.24 rel 4 repeatedly sudden disconnecting on Linux Manjaro
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I am using Veracrypt since about three years and it has beens very robust, even in critical sitiuations i.e. accidential power loss on computer or unintendet interruption of USB-cable to an USB Veracrypt volume.
The crashes happen since Update on rel 4 and I am sure of that, because I clearly get indicated by Manjaro pacman, which software components are updated.
When the crash happens, there is no window popping up or any message shown. In demsg, I can see, that it looks like someone had pulled the USB cable: simply suddenly disconnecting. I have proofed, that the hardare connection to the volume is OK. Best evidence for that is, that the LED lamp at the USB disk is on and I can remount the volume with Veracrypt immediately after the unwanted disconnect.
I have attached dmesg, as far as it concernes the sudden disconnect problem. dmesg tells, that it looks like I would have disconnected the volume just like I would have pulled the USB cable. After that, my program Thunderbird wanted to access the Veracrypt volume and the Linux kernel reported IO errors. Thunderbird then crashed and closed itslef without any messages.
Soon after that, dmesg shws, that the volume is detected again by Manjaro-Linux, but of course, it cannot mount it. But it tries, to write data on it, which of course fails again.
The USB vume is encrypted as a a volume and not as a container file. USB-connection is USB 3.0. In the time before and after the updating from rel 3 to rel 4 I have not changed something on the Manjaro System, allthough of course Manjaro is a sub from Arch Linux which are all rolling releases. Thus they get always latest updates of every peace of software, you have installed on your computer. Therefore of course it may be, that some interaction may cause the problem and it is not Veracrypt itself. I am not an expert (as my nick tells) and I have no expertise, to find conflicts in the system.
Hi there! I just got the message, that we have a kernel / usb xhci_hd Bug in all Linux-Distributions with kernel above 4.19. Potentially any USB-3 device may be affected and can stop working or reject to be mounted etc. You can read about here:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=202541
Only workaround in my case is, to mount the Veracrypt volume via USB-2, as USB-2 is not affected by this bug.
But perhaps USB-3 does work also, if I connect the Veracrypt volume via USB-3 hub to an USB-3 plug. I do use this configuration on my laptop in my business and it had nerver shown up the bug til now, whereas on my desktop, I have had the bug three times til now, eventually only by bad luck associated with the Update of Veracrypt to rel. 4.
Only question now remaining:
How sensitive is Veracrypt volume to data corruption, if it is unmounted when this bug will happen?
"...Only question now remaining:
How sensitive is Veracrypt volume to data corruption, if it is unmounted when this bug will happen?..."
I've been using Truecrypt and Vercrypt for a really, really long time and haven't had much problem with it losing files. I have had to run checkdisk a couple of times but there was no major loss of data.
I'm getting the same thing in windows 7. (maybe). I thought it was the drive failing. The first disconnected drive(call it Tobshiba) I got running again in a eSATA dock to copy to the new drive. I installed a new drive (Call it HGST)hanging outside the case and it disconneted also. I thought maybe I kicked it but after reading this post...maybe veracrypt it's disconnecting on me also. The first one has been working installed for a long time(call it Tobshiba). It has only disconnected from one specific SATA cable location with the same power connection. It doesn't happen by any means right away like days. I'm going to reinstall the original drive(call it Tobshiba) that I got working in the dock and try the latestest one disconnected (Call it HGST) in the dock and see what happens. If it disconnected I'll come back and post. If it doesn't in a couple of day I will also post results.
OK it's been a while. I had the same dropping error on two different drives. I swapped the power cable that was feeding the drive and I've had no more problems. My apologies for jumping the gun. It was just an odd sequence of events that this happened now after years of no problems.
Last edit: John Deener 2020-03-10
Hello John!
Did you really read and understand read my postings? The bug, which causes the veracrypt drive to disconnect suddenly, while it is mounted and is in access of reading and writing data is caused by a Linux bug. It has nothing to do with any WIndows OS!
Til now, there is no solution for it, because it seems to be a difficult interaction between the Linux kernel and the USB xhci driver. It is hard to anaylze the bug, because the disconnect error happens only from time to time without any known trigger. Further it seems, that it happens only on some hardare but you cannot find out, what is the difference between hardware, whre it happens and where not.
To my knowledge today, Linux users will have to live with it until the bug is solved. And therefore the main question is:
If the verycrypt volume (entire disc is encrypted) is disconnected while data is written, who big is the chance, that data corruption will happen with the consequence, that the entire volume cannot be accessed via Veracrypt anymore and thus data is lost?
Could please someone from Veracrypt team answer this very relevant question within the next days!
I have the same issue. Connecting my 8TB drive over USB3, I have freezes of the whole system. Whereas I connect it via USB2, I have none of these issues. Debian 10, kernel 5.10