/dev/sda on Librem 14?

Hardware
1

What is /dev/sda on the Librem 14?

2
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3

I tried the following:

lsblk -do +VENDOR,MODEL,SERIAL

but /dev/sda doesn’t appear there. It only see it in Gnome Disks. Does the Librem 14 have an SD card slot that would be detected as /dev/sda even without media loaded?

4

It’s the sdcard reader

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5

Never. Furthermore, Disks shows partitions: /dev/sda1, etc. Are you about to install PureOS? New install on brand new M.2 SSD? Anyway, please execute this commands:
sudo parted -l
sudo fdisk --list or sudo fdisk -l

Now you would prefer to select some particular drive (/dev/sda), the one you are about to work with (or just look closer at its partition(s), if any already there.
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sd[×]

Now you’ll note that this command works as well, under NAME:

lsblk -do +VENDOR,MODEL,SERIAL
6

I believe so. So try inserting a card.

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7

‘parted -l’ and ‘fdisk -l’ do not list /dev/sda. ‘fdisk -l /dev/sda’ says:

disk: cannot open /dev/sda: No medium found

/dev/sda exists and is listed by Gnome Disks so I’m thinking it is the SD card reader without media loaded.

8

Most of the times the “No medium found” error means that the your SSD is damaged. Please disconnect external power supply and take out this (there used) SSD and reconnect it properly (if compatible with Librem 14 at all). Or even better, test it within some external housing device at the first place. Did you ever have had some data on it?

P.S. Just leave SD card thoughts aside, at least for now. Nothing hidden there (if SD card inserted sudo fdisk -l will show it). Similarly if your SSD (that otherwise works outside), or inserted SD card, is not getting enough power you might have internal Librem 14 issue. Please check:

etc. as within this linked post. Are you installing there some Linux distribution?

9 
dmesg | grep sd

and

find /dev/disk/

will give a bit more initial information about (some of) your storage devices.

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10

I’m a bit confused. I don’t have anything inserted in the built-in SD card slot and I don’t have an external SSD connected. I’m trying to discover what hardware /dev/sda refers to on my system and I think it’s just the empty SD card slot built into the Librem 14, right?

‘dmesg | grep sd’ and ‘find /dev/disk/’ seem to refer to it like this:

Attached SCSI removable disk
usb-Generic_STORAGE_DEVICE
pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:6:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0

11

Perhaps might be useful to share with us output of, as described here:

12

Can you maybe post the output verbatim? I’d expect much more output, especially from the find command.

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13

So wouldn’t you just insert a valid SD card (don’t know which size the slot is) in order to confirm?

It is unfortunate with Linux computers that an SD card slot differs in device name from one computer to another e.g. if the card reader is a USB device on an internal USB bus then it might show up as /dev/sdx or e.g. if the card reader is directly interfaced as SD then it might show up as /dev/mmcblkx

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14

I inserted an SD card and /dev/sda1 appeared and contained the contents of the card so /dev/sda is the SD card reader on the Librem 14.

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15

Perhaps you should make your post as “Solution” then.

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