mjenkins

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i am really angry and i don't know how to fix this.
i am dual booting windows 2000 and fedora core1
i have a 40GB Maxtor for both of these to run off of seperatly.
i also have a 160BG Maxtor for storage.

I think the problem arose when i tried to make a simlink
the 160BG is formatted fat32 so i can read it from both operating systems.
while i was located in a directory on this drive i accidentally tried to simlink
to another folder on the drive. i don't know if this could have ruined the drive or something?

all i know is that when i become root and try to move files onto the drive now, sometimes they will appear as 0KB and not be able to access them.

i went back into windows and ran a defrag on this drive and some of the files appeared as found files which i could then rename.

does anyone have any opinion whether this is a hardware problem, a problem under linux or i have also heard the mellissa virus does this (but i was in linux)...

ac1980

Really looks like a bug, you should file this to fedora core (after double-checking your mount options).
Symlinking on fat32 should only give a "operation not permitted" error.
However, if I remember right at present there is a limit of 2GB for a single file, so this may be the problem.

DavidPhillips

Can you give the exact command you used?

mjenkins

i found the message below and emailed this guy (Adam)
he mailed me how he fixed this on his debian box.
i upgraded to the 2.6.3-2.1.253.2.1 kernel and this seemed to fix it.
i am also getting the "failed to preserve ownership" message again
so this seems reassuring for now...

this was getting really bad. below are the conditions in which i experienced this:
any use of mv as root to the vfat filesystem
any use of cp as root to the vfat filesystem
any use of gnome to drag and drop files as root to the vfat filesystem
any use of konqueror as root to the vfat filesystem (i was using the "make gallery" option on pictures)

Included message
------------------------------------------
hi,

wow, I thought I was the only one

yes, I think, kindof - since posting this I've made a
few changes to my system and I recently I tried moving
files and had no problem. Not sure what fixed it but
heres whats different:

* updgraded to 2.6.2 kernel - I suspect its a bug in
2.4 fat32 filesystem

* changed fstab to mount my drive so my normal user
has access ie:
/dev/hdg1 /mnt/c vfat
rw,user,noauto,umask=022,uid=i 0 0

* Other things - I update my system very regularly so
although unlikely it could have perhaps been insmod,
mv, etc.


I still think the mv command should check the dest
file size when the move has finished before deleting
the original file - like for moving between file
systems

Let me know if you fix it on yours, i'd be interested
to know what the cause is.

Thanks,
Adam

--- Michael Jenkins wrote: >
Hi,
>
> I was just wondering if you ever found a way to fix
> this... The same thing happened to me using a 160
> GB Maxtor with Fedora Core 1
> and 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl kernel. I know it is
> normal for you to get this message "failed to
> preserve ownership" for doing operations to a vfat
> (fat32) drive because that filesystem does not
> support ownerships.
> I thought I had done something to ruin the drive
> because vfat does not support symlinks either and i
> tried to ln -s to some files while in that drive.
> Anyway, I just wanted to see if maybe it is because
> of a bad kernel or something....
> I lost about 140 GB of mp3's this way so don't feel
> too bad !!!
> Mike Jenkins
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I just moved a heap of direcories to a 140GB fat32
> partition and now most
> the newly created files are 0 bytes. The old files
> are no longer there.
>
> I got this message from mv:
> mv: *failed to preserve ownership* for
> `/mnt/d/test-dir/123/xine_snapshot-1.png': Operation
> not permitted
>
> I also had this happen when I tried to move files
> using konqueror. The
> directories that had subdirectories have had the subdirectories
> emptied. I'm very frustrated with this and would like to know
> why this is happening
> and what I can do to prevent it (I'd like to keep
> that partition as
> fat32). The strange thing to me is that some files
> copied ok. I'm running
> debian testing with kernel 2.4.22. I was getting
> this same problem on
> debian stable and on an older kernel (this is one
> reason I upgraded).
>
> I was originally thinking it may have caused by my
> HPT370 IDE controller,
> or the fat32 filesystem not properlly supporting my
> 200GB HD, which could
> perhaps still be the case???
>
> This has been happening since I've had debian on
> this computer so I have
> been using cp -r;rm -r to move directories. Today I
> was lazy and used mv.
> Should I always do the two commands or am I suppsed
> to be able to use mv?
>
> Is there any way I can recover moved files from an
> ext2 partition? Its
> probably been overwritten my mozillas cache, but for
> next time...
>
> Any thoughts or suggestions would be apreciated,
>
> Thanks,
> Adam

AutOPSY

Gnome may be running suid root. maybe I dont know what Im talking about, but failed to preserve ownership means exactly what it says. its not a bug.

and when copying files try to copy them as their original owner.

I copy files to a vfat USB storage device all the time as root.
I get this errror also. but doesnt matter cause I use root to install these files.

ac1980

It's indeed a kernel problem. In the link below you can find a discussion and even a patch for 2.4.20 kernel. I suppose this has been fixed in recent 2.4 kernels, still I'm not 100% sure.

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/lin...12.0/1036.html