Fat32 Mount

**ximian** · 06-04-2003

Looking for a quick resolution to this... I have looked all over and have not found an answer on how to mount a Fat32 Hard Disk so that I can read/copy files to this drive.

This drive is listed at HDD1 being a slave on my secondary IDE. Both cd-roms are being read by linux BUT this hard drive..

I exit out of X and try: mount /dev/hdd1/hard disk or hard drive. Does not seem to work, more than likely I am doing something wrong here. I am a n3wb to linux soo just starting out.. so far its been easy.

BTW.. running RH kernal 2.4.20-8
Master 1st IDE -> WD80 (Par1 40GB[XP], Par2 18GB[Fat32], Par3-5[Boot-Swap-Root-RH 2.4.20-8])
Slave 1st IDE -> Plextor CD/RW
Master 2nd IDE -> Sony CD/RW
Slave 2nd IDE (because it is) -> WD30 (Fat32 - Music/Database Files) <-- "Disk I am trying to get RH linux to read".

**yowwww** · 06-04-2003

see my guide and you will find the answer there, it's pretty easy once you know how to do it.

link to my guide is below

check out the page called 'helpful tips', just scroll down a bit and you will see the instructions.

**ximian** · 06-04-2003

Thanks... Will let you know what happens.

**bpark** · 06-04-2003

Here's the mount format:

Code:

mount <device> <directory>

Note that this is a simplifed version of it. For detailed info, use 'man mount'.
Now on to business, to mount FAT32, you need to specify that the type of the device that you are trying to mount is FAT32. In mount, you can use '-t' option.

Code:

mount -t vfat <device> <directory>

('vfat' is the argument you pass after -t for FAT32)
Now, if you are using Redhat, you no doubt have /mnt with subdirectories /mnt/floppy and /mnt/cdrom. I would advise that you create a windows directory in /mnt or if you don't want to, that's fine too.
Since your windows drive is the on the secondary IDE, slave, this should be /dev/hdd. Which partition does Windows reside on this drive? I've never used a disk without a partition but if Windows is the only thing on this drive, then I assume that /dev/hdd is just what we'll use. So use that format above:

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdd /mnt

OR if you made /mnt/windows:

Code:

mount -t vfat /dev/hdd /mnt/windows

Now if you want to see your Windows files, change directory into /mnt or /mnt/windows (whichever is applicable) and run 'ls'.
Now, since mounting devices only works as root, you can modify /etc/fstab to let users mount the drive. Take a look at your /etc/fstab. There's probably mount points for the cdrom and floppy and some other mount points. Append this next line if you want to let normal users (non root users) mount the Windows drive:

Code:

/dev/hdd  /mnt  vfat  ro,user,noauto   0 0

You should no doubt see that /etc/fstab has a certain format. Use the tab key to space these tokens up nicely. Make sure to terminate that line with a newline or this file will not parse correctly (Well, if you use emacs in Redhat, I believe this problem will be resolved since it's taken care of).

Dolda2000 do you know what the last two tokens are used for? In my /etc/fstab, I see them listed under dump and pass respectively.

**bpark** · 06-04-2003

BTW, once you've successfully added that line to /etc/fstab, you can now mount /dev/hdd as any user by typing 'mount /mnt'

**ximian** · 06-04-2003

Wow that was easy...

actual line added to /etc/fstab

Code:

/dev/hdd1 		/mnt/MP3Server		vfat  	noauto,user,ro 0 0

Thanks guys!

**ximian** · 06-04-2003

Wanted to add another question. When I rebooted (I changed my startup to init3) i log into root and states I have mail. Ok so type "mail" i get a load of information of what had previously initiated then imediately after %@ and #@ start showing up after the 30th line or so. I could not figure out how to exit out from this or delete command line mail.

Gave up after typing sever commands like help, quit, killall, kill, quit mail.... etc. So just did a cold reboot.

Not too worried, as I do not have email setup on linux, if I did its webbased only. So a possibility of a virus is null.

Thanks in advance!

**bpark** · 06-04-2003

So you must have Windows on the first partition. Well, glad you got that working.
As for 'mail', you can always use 'mail | more' when the output is more than the screen can handle. I guess the better way would be 'mail | less' since 'less' allows you to scroll back the page as where more doesn't.
The messages that you get as root are from some program that Redhat installs. Since I'm not running Redhat, I'd ask a Redhat user to help him out here. If my memory serves me correct, these messages have to do with the system diagnostics.
By the way, you should genereally login with a normal user than change to root.

**Dolda2000** · 06-04-2003

I don't really understand what's happening for you with the mail . Could you give more info and/or a screenshot?
Anyway, to quit a runaway program at a terminal, just press Ctrl+C to send it a SIGINT. If that doesn't work, press Ctrl+Z to stop it, and then run "kill -KILL %1" to kill it for sure. If even that doesn't work, log in at another terminal (press Ctrl+F2 in text mode), find the PID of the program using top or ps, and "kill -KILL" the PID.

**l_Kriss** · 06-04-2003

is -KILL the same as -9?
Never heard of -KILL before

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