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I currently have an SD card with a non-running installation of Debian Squeeze. SSH on this card is enabled. However the system keeps rebooting. I would now like to delete the boot.rc file on the boot partition of the SD card from a Windows computer, but I fail.

Here is the problem: I have a Windows pc with an internal card reader (the only card reader available at the moment). I enter the card and can access it and rename boot.rc or delete it. But when I remove the card and put it back again, the boot.rc is back again or has its old name back. Deleting other files on that image results in the same - no effect. I tried pulling it out of the reader without unmounting and unmounting via the taskbar in the lower right Windows corner.

Could you please explain to me, how I can delete/rename boot.rc on the SD card with a Debian installation? Do I have to follow a special unmounting procedure? Right-clicking the SD card in Windows Explorer has a menu item "SG eject", but that shows no effect.

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  • You checked the permissions under windows for accessing the SD card and the path & file that you try to delete?
    – ikku
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 0:42
  • What version of Debian?
    – Jivings
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 7:17
  • Debian squeeze, edited into the question. @ikku I do not get an error, when I try to delete the file. It disappears and is magically back, when I take the card out and put it back again.
    – Till B
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 8:17
  • Is it an thoroughly used SD card? The nature of SD cards is that they usually fail while writing data or deleting data. This can happen without a notice from the OS, like an error message.
    – ikku
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 10:20

2 Answers 2

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This kind of "repairs" must be carried out under Linux, just because Windows is not reliable and generally too "invasive" for such things.

As suggested in the other answer, a Linux LiveCD could be the fastest solution. My favorite LiveCD/USB distribution is Knoppix but DSL could be sufficient for you specific case.

A similar solution (if you don't want to burn CDs or write USB pens) is to run a live distro inside a VM, giving to it the exclusive access to your card reader.

For what concerns your specific problem, my guess is that Windows is mounting the SD card filesystem read-only. BTW, Windows can't access ext2/ext3 partitions directly, so if you used an ext2/ext3 driver such as IFS probably you forgot to set its RW permissions.

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Boot from Linux LiveUSB/LiveCD and try again...

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  • Not possible, it is my work computer and it doesn't allow booting from cd or USB...
    – Till B
    Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 8:03

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