I had a recently built 20.3 MATE system on an external SSD running via USB 3.0. I just logged in and did an update (apt update, apt upgrade) in a terminal. It ran for a bit and then displayed (keep in mind that this was written down; this was posted from a different system, the one on the internal NVMe SSD):
Code: Select all
unpacking apt-utils (2.09) over (2.08)
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting
unable to fsync updated status of 'apt-utils' input/output error
E: sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
W: problem unlinking /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin and then something about read-only file system
All icons, including at the bottom, were grayed-out. I tried to insert a USB 2.0 flash drive to copy some things, but Caja would not start (nothing would start).
The system is toast. I thought this only happened with Antergos and later cousins.