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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] hd problem
  • Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 17:18:32 +0000 (UTC)

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Ian Scott wrote:


So what is expected to happen if I try with Bl3 to mount a fat32
partition? Might > this have messed up my fat32 partition?

Nope - mounting a partition won't reformat it. If you want to be really
paranoid, mount readonly with -ro option, then you won't be able to write to
it at all.

mount /dev/hda1 /hd -ro
mount: option requires an argument --o
VFS: Can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev ide0(3,1).

In BL3 if I do not specify -t msdos or -t iso9660 I get back error messages from VFS about ext2 and MSDOS not found, but it mounts anyway, despite no vfat support. In BL2, when I compiled a kernel with no vfat support, when I try to mount a floppy disk (formatted with DOS 7.1 which might have put on vfat support) it will NOT mount at all without -t msdos - otherwise just tells me no support for vfat in the kernel. (The hd which is probably not vfat mounts without any comments, as does the CD-ROM drive). I had to put back the vfat support (and then it mounted fd0 without comments) so maybe this is why Steven included it in BL2. I presume BL2 uses a different version of mount that in some ways is less fussy (it automatically identifies things) but that requires vfat support where the BL3 one (busybox) does not. I should make aliases like someone else suggested (alias CD = 'mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /cd').


I am learning a lot from my mistakes in compiling the kernel - comparing the BL3 and BL2 and bare.i kernels with mine.


People keep telling me different things. FAT32 is for 2G or larger drives
and
FAT16, they say, can handle long file names (with freedos or msdos 7).
Is this wrong? In any event, I think I should keep fat32 and long file
names off
my DOS/linux computers to avoid problems. I can copy truncated linux files
to DOS
once in a while instead of ~1 names. Easier to type.

The difference between FAT16 and FAT32 is AFAIK just to do with the size of
clusters I believe. See http://www.activewin.com/faq/faq_2.shtml

The long filenames is something else. DOS (FAT16/FAT32) filesystems really
only support 8.3 filenames, but there is some clever hidden stuff which does
the translations. If you have a win9x system, and boot to DOS you will see
the 8.3 filenames. See http://pclt.cis.yale.edu/pclt/BOOT/VFAT.htm. Note
that if you rename the 8.3 versions of files, you will lose the long
filename information.

Only reason I would have to keep long file names is if I want to copy linux files to DOS.


Well, I still don't know what is going on with the computer with Win32 that has the messed up partition table. I could not reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del) from Bl2 after booting to it from a floppy disk with zimage and loadlin on it - just got a full page of error messages that looked like memory registers. I should run memtest next (and come back in a few hours - 256MB).

> > >
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