vfat not working

bartszyszka · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 29

Hi. I just got Gentoo setup a few days ago, but am having trouble mounting a partition I have WindowsMe installed on so that I can access the files there. When I run mount -t vfat /dev/hda4 /c (I mkdird the /c directory before), I get this error:
mount: fs type vfat not supported by kernel

but I specifically re-compiled my kernel so that it would have vfat support. And when I check the Kcontrol module for looking at the kernel setup, everything for vfat support seems to be working fine. Any idea?

- Bart

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

Have you got an entry for it in your /etc/fstab file? This is what my /etc/fstab file says for the windows partition.
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat noatime,user,noauto 0 0

Then what I do to mount is mount /dev/hda1. It will mount the drive to /mnt/windows and I will have write access to it. Try it, if you run into any errors post the exact error here.
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bartszyszka · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 29

Hmm.... it still says:
mount: fs type vfat not supported by kernel

Is there some config file for mount or some other file where it might still think that vfat isn't supported? I think the first time around I compiled my kernel without vfat support by accident and then I recompiled with the support added in.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20097

fstab is the only file I have ever made changes. What other partitions are on the hard drive? Are you certain you are trying to mount the correct partition? Also, what support did you load in the kernel? IIRC there is more than 1 setting to include.

bartszyszka · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 29

Which settings would that be? Under filesystens, I have both "DOS FAT fs support" and "VFAT (Windows-95) fs support" compiled in.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20097

I've compiled these:

bartszyszka · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 29

Hmm... maybe I should try re-compiling, then. My laptop uses NVidia's geforce2go drivers. Does that mean I'll have to emerge those and xfree again too? And if I do that, does that mean I'll have to recompile stuff like kde? I have a beautiful setup right now and am afraid to break it...

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20097

AFAIK the only thing you'll need to recompile are the alsa-drivers (if you're using them).

bartszyszka · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 29

Hmm... I just tried recompiling everything, selected all those extra options, and it's *still* not letting me mount a vfat drive. Are there any config files I can check that would tell me if vfat support was properly setup and that there's nothing left over thinking that vfat hasn't been installed? I have a feeling that there's still some old configuration left somewhere...

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20097

The only other thing I can think of, is to try and get a fat32 partition onto another controller to test. You never mention hda or hdb? Could you put the drive there to see if it would mount? It could be your onboard raid controller is not supported. I know of no config files.

gboyce · n00b Joined: 18 Apr 2002 Posts: 22 Location: Lynn, MA

brackenhill_mob · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2002 12:36 pm Post subject:

I'm having exactly the same problem, but when I run mount I see this message

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

Can you post your /etc/fstab file and a listing of "fdisk -l /dev/hda"?

Guest · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2002 4:25 pm Post subject:

fdisk -l /dev/hda shows

puddleglum · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2002 Posts: 63 Location: Albuquerque

Have you tried mounting a different vfat device (like a floppy) to see if
its the device or the software. :?:

Guest · Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2002 6:06 pm Post subject:

These options can cause problems:
iocharset=iso8859-15,umask=0,codepage=850

Did you build in these NLS options into your kernel directly or as a module? If you did not, you will get these errors. Try doing:

brackenhill_mob · Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2002 4:01 pm Post subject:

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

I just noticed that I did not remove the umask=0 option in my quote. You can actually keep that option since it has nothing to do with NLS. Sorry about that.

BTW, if you really want codepage 850 and iso8859-15, compile them into the kernel and you should be OK with these options in fstab too.

ealfert · Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2002 7:18 pm Post subject:

Thanks... i was having the same problem...

I basically copied my settings from my previous Mandrake 8.2 install thinking it would work...

removing codepage 850 and iso8859-15 worked... i left umask=0

What is NLS?

What is codepage 850 and iso8859-15 good for?

Should i go through th trouble of compiling into the kernel?

Mandrake had it...does that mean that they know what they are doing and i should do it that way too?
_________________
Edward Alfert
RootMode, LLC
http://www.rootmode.com/

Naan Yaar · Bodhisattva Joined: 27 Jun 2002 Posts: 1549

NLS = Native Language Support, support for internationalized text.
iso8859-15 = charset (encoding) that supports the Euro character, etc.
codepage 850 = microsoft oem code page for Western European languages

Compiling them as modules probably would not hurt and won't bloat your kernel much.

rburley · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 28 Location: USA

hello,

i'm having a hard time getting the vfat module to install correctly. i think that it has something to do with not having the correct NLS setup. if anyone has experienced anything like this, please see the thread fat filesystem module in the Installing Linux forum.

thanks

EnigmaedgE · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 89

hey, i have the same problem....everything seemed to comple fine. But it still says vfat not recognized by kernel.

But my /proc/filesystem doesnt show vfat. What do i do from here?