Mounting FAT32 drives

[Eccentric]

What's the deal on this? Do the 2.0 and 2.1 kernels support this or not? I'm running 2.1 and I tried to mount my Windows partition as FAT32, but it says that fs type is not supported. Now I've seen this work on 2.2 kernels and I've "heard" that it has been supported since 2.0. Anyone know the scoop?

[Geoff]

yep. you gotta compile support for vfat partitions into the kernel. in the filesystems section there is one for dos and one for vfat, may as well include them both in the kernel. I think there were two codepages or something further down the list that looked like they were needed (the english ones) so I selected them too.

Geoff

[Cable]

FAT32 is different than VFAT. VFAT still has that 2G limit, but FAT32 is a 32 bit File System that can go up to 4 TerraBytes or 4096G. I was not aware that Linux supported FAT32 yet, I thought it was only FAT and VFAT?

[Eccentric]

"vfat" is the flag you add to mount a FAT32 drive. FAT32 has been supported by Linux since the 2.036 kernel. I'm pretty sure the "vfat" option on Linux is extended to include FAT32. I've got a dual-boot at work that mounts a 4GB FAT32 partition when I boot Linux. It's a little slower that ext2, but it's worth it.

[Cable]

Thanks I did not know that and have been using VFAT partitions. I will keep that in mind.

[Geoff]

Well 2.0.36 and up mounts my 3GB FAT32 partition fine, so don't worry about it just use it. They woulda kept the name the same for compatability's sake, otherwise you have to go and edit all your config files every damn version http://www.linuxplanet.com/discussion/wink.gif

Geoff