windows partition won't mount

[eats only heads]

okay here is the line I am using in fstab

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win vfat unmask=000 0 0

for some reason though I am getting an error message when I try to mount it or durring start up.

I should mention that my hd's three other partions are /dev/hda5, /dev/hda6, and /dev/hda7

further more when i go to
file:/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0

the blocks there are

disc
part1
part2
part5
part6
part7

however I only have one windows partition and when I orrigionally partitioned the drive it only showed 4 parts

anyway any idea of whats wrong?

I don't quit remember what the error message was but it was so generic that I am sure it would be of no use.

[mdwatts]

See if

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win vfat rw,defaults,users,noauto,umask=000 0 0

works.

Change noauto to auto if you want it automatically mounted at boot.

[janet loves bill]

mine is this
/dev/hdb6 /linux vfat default 0 0
and has no probs

[eats only heads]

okay md I tried your segestion and it didn't work(same error). (I was using auto)

oh and janet loves bill I only have one hard drive so hdb wouldn't work and why would you be mounting a fat partition in a directory called /linux.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by eats only heads

oh and janet loves bill I only have one hard drive so hdb wouldn't work and why would you be mounting a fat partition in a directory called /linux.

That was just an example to show you jlb's mounting does work.

What other entries do you have in /etc/fstab?

Perhaps you need to use

/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1

since you are using devfs.

I'm not that familiar with devfs.

[eats only heads]

i doubt that would work or be necessary. THere is a link to there in the dev folder called hda1 and none of my other stuff is mounted that way. here is the entire file:

/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win vfat rw,defaults,users,auto,unmask=000 0 0

[bwkaz]

My guess is that the /mnt/win directory doesn't exist, but I'd have to see the mount error message to be sure of that.

For your "disc part1 part2 part5 part6 part7" question, those are the four partitions. disc is the entire disk (/dev/hda points to this), part1 is the primary partition (probably the Windows one), part2 is the extended partition, and part[567] are all inside part2. They're your next three usable partitions.

EDIT: stupid question perhaps, but your Windows partition is FAT32, right? Not NTFS?

[eats only heads]

yes the directory does exist but the error does mention that as a posibile cause of error. I am 99% sure that my windows partiton is fat32, that is what disk drak said from what I remeber. I am using windows 98 if that has anything to do with it. I had origionally tried to use disk drake durring the install to mount the windows partition but it didn't work then either. Oh and thanks for clarifying what then ment, say perhaps I will have to "explain" to the computer that hda1 is not in hda2

[mdwatts]

As root...

fdisk -l /dev/hda

should list the partitions and filesystem types.

[eats only heads]

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7299 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes


Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 5100 40965718+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 5101 7299 17663467+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 5101 5801 5630751 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 5802 6067 2136613+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 6068 7299 9896008+ 83 Linux

[mdwatts]

Can you manually mount using

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/win

(as root)?

[eats only heads]

nope it says:

wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file systems

as it does at start up

say what is this (LBA) about

[mdwatts]

Does 98 boot ok?

See if Mandrake has anything on their support site about mounting fat32 partitions with Mandrake 9.0 and also anything on devfs.

[eats only heads]

the only site that might have the aswer is in russian, If someone could translate for me or knows of a translator better then altavista let me know here it is.

http://www.ksi-linux.com/maillist/1999.08/msg00115.html

damn it if I constantly have problems which no one has the answer to then I am going to stop using linux. Of corse all of the problems I have had were unltimately the fault of windows.

I supect the problem is whith the definition of vfat, windows ME was previously isntalled and may have changed the partition somewhat. I guess my partition doesn't quite meet the criteria

oh and yes 98 works fine. Again it looks like this will come down to making a custom kernal.