Hi,

I have a dual boot laptop (XP/Red Hat 8) with a VFAT partition (25 GB) supposedly for data, the idea is to read and write data to the same partition no matter which OS is running, bu it's not working quite well. When I am using linux I cant see and modify the files and directories created in XP, but when I boot in XP the files created in linux are just not there.

Any thoughts?

First off, make sure it's fat32, normally XP is ntfs. Second, you'll want to load the vfat module, so open up a terminal, and (as root) type:
modprobe vfat

Then find which partition the vfat partition is with:
fdisk -l
And finally mount it somewhere:
mount -t vfat /dev/hdx /mnt/anywhere

replacing /dev/hdx with the device from fdisk -l and /mnt/anywhere with wherever you want to mount the device.

Cool

Thanks!

That is what I did BEFORE the posting, the partition mounts and I can read and write to it using the VFAT module (the fs type is VFAT in the /etc/fstab) the problem is that the files I create in linux don't show up when I try to access them from XP not even as hidden files or anything....

anyway thanks for trying...

I have to add that I ran a chkdsk /f in the partition (from XP) and the files appeared as lost chains, is this a bug in the VFAT module or am I doing something wrong?

Ideas, comments, anything...?

I don't want you to think I am not following this, but I must say, I've never had a problem with it. I too dual boot XP and linux (several distros) and I've never come across that type of error. My files show up no problem. You might try looking at it from win side of things, maybe it's a problem over there.

I really don't know what to tell you at this point. Google around and see if others have reported a problem, maybe they also have a fix for it.

Cool

heh... sorry this has no meaning to that topic cuz im a linux noob but umm master can u go on aim please i need your help,

MasterC forgot a step. You have to make a directory for the mount device before mounting it or you will get errors.

In my fstab file shows the codepage, iocharset, and umask for my two FAT32 partitions. My iocharset is iso8859-1, codepage is 850, and umask is 0 0 0. Before entering those values check man if you can set these values with the mount command.

nocoolname, you could have sync problems. The files may still be in memory and they have not flush to disk. Try running sync if you have it. You may need to add sync into your fstab file. For Windows XP, download memzip from systweak or a sync utility from system internals.

Did you format FAT with DOS format or LINUX format. LINUX format may not be compatable with Windows XP. Also LINUX may not be compatible with Windows XP filesystem features like linking a system folder (program files, my music, my documents, etc) to a partition.

The think fixed itself, I don't know how or why, but it's OK now, I am sorry to tell you that I did what all you suggested BEFORE the first posting, so it did not help, but I really appreciate the time and effort you guys put in this.

Thank you very much, people like you is what make this comunity grow stronger.

So, as MasterC says

Cool!!

Good Deal, gotta love it when for no reason describable, things just work

Cool

Disable System Restore in XP. I've seen problems with this before. When XPs journaling can't account for a file it moves it to Unknown as a file fragment.