Can't access files on FAT32 partitions?
 

I can't seem to access any of my files ranging from documents to images. I can see them all there but am unable to do anything with them. Any reasons why????

My setup is a dual boot W2K and AMIGO all on the same FAT32 partition.

Thank You In Advance.

most likely a permissions problem................post your /etc/fstab

Are you seeing them in the /DOS directory, or did the partition get set up with its' own mount point?
You can only read files in the /DOS dir.
If (hda1?) has its# own mount point you might try:
mount -o remount -w /dev/hda1
You are the only one I've heard from who has done this on a FAT with W2K or XP.
If you have another FAT, you'll get best results by installing there, so you can have read-write access to the win files.

I don't believe running linux on a fat32 file system is a good idea. The file system isn't able to save the attributes that Linux uses for files and directories. You may want to resize the fat32 partition and move or reinstall linux into the freed up area.

Using Fat32 as a partition usable by both OS's is a good idea. Since things like uid and gid for the filesystem are not stored in the filesystem, they need to be included in the /etc/fstab entry options instead.

Reading through the man page for the mount command would be a good idea. It contains the mount options for the Fat32 file system.

What we're referring to isn't running Linux on FAT but on umsdos, which does support permissions, etc.

Since there are many who think that ZipSlack, Amigo and other umsdos installations are somehow 'inferior', let me just set straight what the advantages and disadvantages of using umsdos are.
The umsdos file system is actually more robust than ext2 and will resist power outages, etc., much better.
File access time is faster on a FAT than ext2. However, since umsods uses a double-directory scheme to provide long-filename and permissions compatibility, actual file access time is a few percent slower.

If you created these files under msdos, you may need to run the umssync command after mounting the partition.

I don't agree that umsdos is more robust.
Quote from http://www.magnux.org/doc/howto/en/UMSDOS-HOWTO-8.php

A maximum of around 65,000 files or clusters per partitions. This also means that a 500 megabytes partition will use cluster 16k large. In other word, a file containing a single byte will use 16k of disk storage.
Everything is controlled by the FAT located at the beginning of the hard drive. The DOS file-system is probably more fragile because of this.

The cluster size is, of course, dependent on the size of the FAT. And the umsdos --linux-.--- files occupy extra disk space. The 'translation' of these files to/from FAT is what causes umsdos to actually give slower file access times. The initial FAT access time should be faster than access under ext2.
The 'robustness' that I refer to means better resistance to 'crashes' or powerofss. In my experience, ext2 will only survive this around 3-5 times. I've yet to lose a single umsdos 'install' this way.
There used to be a problem if you wanted to compile a kernel while running from umsdos, but apparently that has been fixed.
The fact that umsdos is part of the stable 2.4 kernel series and can be reliably run as the / files system, says a lot about it's 'robustness'.