u/PlanetVisitor

I have never seen this in my decades of computer use. It is a bit unsettling, because I was trying to wipe personal data, but it kept on magically re-appearing, even after power cycles! Please read if you're interested and let me know if you have a way of explaining this, or have experienced the same.

The device: a 16 GB Samsung SD-card, that has been in my IP-camera for a while (months to >1 year). It had apparantly been recording continually for an unknown amount of time, this wasn't my intention and happened inadvertently. Eventually it stopped. It wasn't entirely full, so I'm not sure if it looped like a dashcam for a long time or whatever happened exactly. In any way, it was full of video files, each the same in duration.

Because it had been recording my house interior unintentionally, I saw myself walking in the house, to and from the shower, etc. You can imagine I wanted to destroy this data in a good way, so I decided to delete it, then fill the SD-card with random data, and then delete that.

This is what I did and how:

Sequence of action:

1. Insert and mount the SD card
2. The original CCTV files are present and readable
3. Delete files and create new files on the SD-card. All operations report success. No errors in the terminal, Dolphin, or `dmesg`
4. Newly written files can be seen and read normally with `ls`, `cat`, Dolphin file manager
5. Perform sync and unmount
6. Physically remove the SD card, wait a bit
7. Reinsert and mount
8. The card is back in exactly its old state. Newly created files are gone... and the original, old IP camera files magically re-appeared..!

I repeated this, a few things, but replaced step 3:

• (Run 1): I wrote multiple 4 GB files with `dd`, until it returned a "disk full" error.
• (Run 2): with KDE Partition Manager's option to Shred the FAT filesystem. It took a bit over a minute, but it finished and displayed no error messages.
• (Run 3,4,5): Skipped deleting files, and only wrote a small text file with the exact current date & time and a small test message in it, and reproduced this (view it in Dolphin, KDE's file manager, or by using `cat`).

Performed on 2 setups:

• (Runs 1,2,3): Fedora 44 KDE desktop, using a USB SD-card reader
• (Run 4,5): Old laptop booted from a SystemRescue USB stick, using its built-in SD-card reader via a passive microSD-to-SD adapter

SD card data:

• bought between 2015-2020
• Samsung Evo microSDHC, model no. MB-MP16D
• yes, it's old, and it's not meant for 24/7 operation like CCTV

Note:

• lsblk reported the device as writable (RO=0)
• kernel reported no write errors, I/O errors, resets, or write-protect condition

The SD card is now physically destroyed.

Really wondering if this is a common thing: a flash device that accepts writes and deletes, even FAT filesystem table shreds, but never writes them; and also reverts to its previous state after power loss? It makes me uncomfortable because this seems to imply there's basically no way of confirming a NAND drive has actually wiped files, unless goes through a power cycle (physically removing and re-inserting) and is actively checked again after..?

I have never seen this in my decades of computer use. It is a bit unsettling, because I was trying to wipe personal data, but it kept on magically re-appearing, even after power cycles! Please read if you're interested and let me know if you have a way of explaining this, or have experienced the same.

The device: a 16 GB Samsung SD-card, that has been in my IP-camera for a while (months to >1 year). It had apparantly been recording continually for an unknown amount of time, this wasn't my intention and happened inadvertently. Eventually it stopped. It wasn't entirely full, so I'm not sure if it looped like a dashcam for a long time or whatever happened exactly. In any way, it was full of video files, each the same in duration.

Because it had been recording my house interior unintentionally, I saw myself walking in the house, to and from the shower, etc. You can imagine I wanted to destroy this data in a good way, so I decided to delete it, then fill the SD-card with random data, and then delete that.

This is what I did and how:

Sequence of action:

1. Insert and mount the SD card
2. The original CCTV files are present and readable
3. Delete files and create new files on the SD-card. All operations report success. No errors in the terminal, Dolphin, or `dmesg`
4. Newly written files can be seen and read normally with `ls`, `cat`, Dolphin file manager
5. Perform sync and unmount
6. Physically remove the SD card, wait a bit
7. Reinsert and mount
8. The card is back in exactly its old state. Newly created files are gone... and the original, old IP camera files magically re-appeared..!

I repeated this, a few things, but replaced step 3:

• (Run 1): I wrote multiple 4 GB files with `dd`, until it returned a "disk full" error.
• (Run 2): with KDE Partition Manager's option to Shred the FAT filesystem. It took a bit over a minute, but it finished and displayed no error messages.
• (Run 3,4,5): Skipped deleting files, and only wrote a small text file with the exact current date & time and a small test message in it, and reproduced this (view it in Dolphin, KDE's file manager, or by using `cat`).

Performed on 2 setups:

• (Runs 1,2,3): Fedora 44 KDE desktop, using a USB SD-card reader
• (Run 4,5): Old laptop booted from a SystemRescue USB stick, using its built-in SD-card reader via a passive microSD-to-SD adapter

SD card data:

• bought between 2015-2020
• Samsung Evo microSDHC, model no. MB-MP16D
• yes, it's old, and it's not meant for 24/7 operation like CCTV

Note:

• lsblk reported the device as writable (RO=0)
• kernel reported no write errors, I/O errors, resets, or write-protect condition

The SD card is now physically destroyed.

Really wondering if this is a common thing: a flash device that accepts writes and deletes, even FAT filesystem table shreds, but never writes them; and also reverts to its previous state after power loss? It makes me uncomfortable because this seems to imply there's basically no way of confirming a NAND drive has actually wiped files, unless goes through a power cycle (physically removing and re-inserting) and is actively checked again after..?

Waarom is dit zo

I just wanted to share how much I appreciate Dolphin as a file manager.

I switched to Fedora with KDE a few months ago. Before that, I was using Windows 11 on my desktop + Linux on my home server (everything via ssh terminal), and Pop!_OS on my laptop (with the default COSMIC desktop environment) and some other Linux distros to play with.

I came from Windows, so I was used to File Explorer. It works, but once you need to do a lot of file management, you quickly start wanting proper dual-pane functionality. On Windows I often ended up using two Explorer windows. Later I used WinSCP as a kind of customizable dual-pane file manager, despite it primarily being an SSH/SCP application.

When I first saw Dolphin, I honestly didn’t immediately realise how powerful and customizable it was. But the more I use it, the more it feels almost perfectly suited to the way I want to work.

Split view, tabs, the integrated terminal, customizable toolbars, previews, network locations, and all the other options are already great. But what I especially appreciate is that I can also remove things I don’t need.

- A physical drive appears twice in the sidebar? Hide one entry.
- Not using network shares? Hide the entire category.
- Don’t need a certain panel or toolbar button? Remove it.

That may sound like a small thing, but it creates a rare combination: a lot of functionality without constant visual noise... Software often seems to choose between simplicity and power. Either one but almost never both. Either it is clean and limited, or powerful and cluttered (with steep learning curve). Dolphin somehow gives me both: a calm interface and a huge number of possibilities underneath it.

So... an application can be powerful and customisable AND look clean and organised - this is rare!! And I love it!

After installing Fedora+KDE, as a "post-install reflex", I was already looking into advanced file managers. I expected Dolphin, as a desktop environment default included file manager, to be fairly basic; expected I would have to look for something more advanced myself.. But it just wasn't necessary... Dolphin has everything I need. I use it quite intensively, including network shares, USB drives. (I'm migrating multiple devices from Windows partitions to exFAT and Btrfs partitions.) But I've just never run into that wall where I feel the program is working against me, or is too limited... it just didn't happen.

I am 39 but for the first time in my life, I genuinely had the feeling that a file manager had been designed specifically for me. Obviously it wasn’t literally like that 😁 but the fact that it briefly felt that way was quite special. I really thought my needs & preferences were very specific and I was being difficult about "that unused network drive is always visible, I wish it just wasn't there", but apparantly it's not just me...

I’m still learning some shortcuts and building the muscle memory, but I'm already doing things with Dolphin faster than in any other file manager I've used before.

So: thank you to everyone who has worked on Dolphin and KDE, and supported it. ❤️ I am going to set up a monthly support amount now.[Edit: monthly wasn't possible so I chose yearly, done ✅]

-- My question is --

If SMART is Disabled, what can be the reason for this?

Is it only possible someone is trying to hide something, or are there common ways it is done unintentionally or even automatically? For example when it is in a NAS and someone is messing with the settings?

-- Background --

I bought a Samsung 850 EVO today for cheap. I met up with the guy. I asked for SMART and he tried to send it online, but didn't get to do it after hours of trying. The story was a bit vague, it seemed like he really tried but couldn't get it to work.

I proposed to bring my laptop and test SMART in his house or in my car with my laptop; it wasn't too far away. He agreed.

It was a young guy, like 14-16 years old, and he said it was his grandpa's SSD and he had only used it himself for a while to store his games on. He didn't seemed to be scamming, but more honest because he said he just didn't know the history of the drive well at all, and he also said he wasn't sure if I would get it to work at all, because he couldn't "put Windows on it" himself. So he seemed genuinely concerned that he was making me pay for a faulty product; a scammer would rather do the opposite, I suppose.

In my car with him, I used smartmontools' `smartctl` command and I saw for the first time, a drive that had SMART disabled. I found that strange. I have another SSD of the same type, and that did produce valid results with this USB-SATA bridge, so I excluded the USB-SATA bridge as a possible cause.

Because the price was too low and I'm not planning to store critical data on it anyway, I agreed, after I enabled SMART manually and the results appeared. The SMART values aren't too bad for an 850. They are:

[Edit:] At home, I ran a short test and long test, and both were OK with no errors logged.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAGS    VALUE WORST THRESH FAIL RAW_VALUE
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   PO--CK   100   100   010    -    0
  9 Power_On_Hours          -O--CK   098   098   000    -    8186
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       -O--CK   097   097   000    -    2247
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     PO--C-   097   097   000    -    50
179 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot   PO--C-   100   100   010    -    0
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  -O--CK   100   100   010    -    0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  -O--CK   100   100   010    -    0
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       PO--C-   100   100   010    -    0
187 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt -O--CK   100   100   000    -    0
190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel -O--CK   069   047   000    -    31
195 ECC_Error_Rate          -O-RC-   200   200   000    -    0
199 CRC_Error_Count         -OSRCK   100   100   000    -    0
235 POR_Recovery_Count      -O--C-   099   099   000    -    144
241 Total_LBAs_Written      -O--CK   099   099   000    -    24460751190

Distro and WM/DE: Fedora 44 with KDE Plasma
Kernel: 7.0.10-201.fc44.x86_64
File Manager: Dolphin
Interactive shell: Bash

Situation:

I insert a USB flash drive, and use it in the Dolphin file manager (it automounts to a path in /run/username/... when clicked on). Then I unmount in Dolphin or using the 'system-icons part' of the taskbar.

Now I want to use the USB drive again. When I do lsblk it does appear as sda, but I notice that the size (capacity) is zero(!) Also there seems to be no way to mount it, because the partitions are not visible.

Question:

Is there a way to mount a USB flash drive again, after unmounting it?

Current workaround:

Physically remove the drive, and insert again. Same or different USB port, seem to make no difference.

Background information:

On my server, there is a USB HDD 'permanently' attached to a USB port. Every night, a cronjob (a bash script) mounts that USB HDD, performs some backup activities, and unmounts it. It even sends a spindown command (hdparm -y). In this case, re-mounting it a hundred times seems no problem. The problem seems to occur only, when the GUI unmounts it (or at least, the Dolphin file manager - not sure if I should look at all GUIs here or just KDE/Dolphin).

Is it possible to define shortcuts to navigate up and down in the notes? And in the notebooks?

There is an option called 'Back' and 'Forward' in the shortcuts list, but they seem to move to the note I had open prior to the current one - not the one above or below it in the list.

I really really prefer using the keyboard. I switched to Joplin from MS OneNote because I wanted to self-host and support open software, and in OneNote this could be done using Ctrl-PageUp/Down, and Ctrl-Tab and and Ctrl-Shift-Tab for sections. This is one of the few issues I have after 6 months of use, but it's very important to me.

>[SOLVED - See comments]

I run: Fedora 43 - KDE Spin

Problem: My GPU loses its custom RGB LED setting after boot and suspend.

Partial solution: The default RGB LED setting is a bright rainbow; this is distracting for me. My custom setting is to have it use only its white LEDs and dimmed. It respons to OpenRGB, so when I do

/usr/bin/openrgb --profile "/path/profile-file"

it loads my custom profile and the LED goes back to the setting I want (only white light and dimmed). This works.

I have made a systemd-service so that it loads upon boot. That works so far.

Problem left: But, when the system goes into suspend, it does not load when resuming.

Question: I think I could find different ways to solve this, but is there a "best practice" for Fedora/KDE things to do after resume? Where should we trigger this?

>[SOLVED - See comments]