[tlug] Trouble with external USB hard disk

[David Bernat <dbernat@example.com>]

Following the upgrade to Hardy Heron last week, I have lost access to
external USB hard disks.

Going into administrator mode at the disk and filesystems option in
system settings generates the following error message when I try to
enable the hard disk.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
An error occurred while enabling /etc.,The system reported: can't link
lock file /etc/mtab~: Operation not permitted (use -n flag to override)

Return code from mount was 16.
"problems writing or locking /etc/mtab"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can now view the files on the hard disk, but cannot
create folders or move files to the hard disk.

The disk is mounted at

/etc

Type

auto

device

/dev/sdb1

Enabled

disabled
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
mtab is empty

fstab contains the following information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#  -- This file has been automaticly generated by ntfs-config --
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/sda1 :
UUID=9b6119b9-a271-4e66-af2d-9ba2fb3509c4 / ext3
nouser,relatime,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 1
# Entry for /dev/sda5 :
UUID=6298b9dd-6c63-41a2-a9f3-7f2e19cd2b52 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660
user,utf8,atime,noauto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0
/root/sdb5 /root auto users,atime,noauto,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sdc1 /home auto users,atime,auto,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /etc auto users,atime,auto,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

sda is the internal hard disk in the laptop
sdb is the external USB hard disk
sdc is the internal DVD drive

Whatever the problem is, a side effect is the total loss of access to the
Internet through a network.

Does anybody have any suggestions?