Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

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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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org