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Old 09-26-2005, 01:10 AM   #1
dystopian
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Question Mounting FAT 32 Partition Changes Type to Hidden


Hi,
I am relatively new to Linux, and I have tried searching, both in here and elsewhere, for a solution to no avail.

I have recently installed Ubuntu and have configured /etc/fstab to mount a Fat32 partition on boot. When I boot Linux, everything works like it should. I can read and write to my Fat 32 partition fine.

However, when I boot into Windows, the partition can no longer be seen. In Windows, it shows up as "Healthy, Unknown Partition" and it refuses to recognise it as Fat 32.

Using fdisk and other partition tools, it seems as though the partition's type has been changed to "Fat 32 (Hidden)". I can change it, via fdisk, back to "Fat 32" and boot into Windows with everything working like it should.

However, if I then boot back into Linux and mount the partition, the partition type changes back to Fat 32 (Hidden). It makes no difference if its mounted via fstab or manually by mount -t vfat.

I can then change it back to Fat 32 through fdisk each time, but that solution isn't really ideal.

Is there something I'm missing? Is there anyway, short of mounting it ro, to stop this occurring? The main reason I have this partition is so I can access and write files across both Linux and Windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Old 09-26-2005, 01:31 AM   #2
SkyEye
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I've used FAT32 with Linux on numerous times (both for Windows and only for Linux) but I didn't have any issue like this. This sounds like that mounting your partition from Ubuntu changes partition type. Can you post your fstab entry, (I don't expect to see anything extraordinary)

Anyway did you check LQ's Ubuntu forum and other Ubuntu specific discussions to see wheather this is an Ubuntu specific problem?
 
Old 09-26-2005, 01:43 AM   #3
aysiu
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Follow these exact directions to mount FAT32:

http://ubuntuguide.org/#automountfat

If you do, you shouldn't have these problems.
 
Old 09-26-2005, 02:03 AM   #4
Simon Bridge
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dystopian: I guess you could try adding the "unhide" option to fstab.

I have Ubuntu 5.04 dual booting with Win98SE - I don't have this problem with a hard drive partition, though I have seen something like it with windows CDs and floppys. AFAIK: FAT32(hidden) is not a different fs from fat32 - it is the normal fat32 marked as hidden.

I too would like to see that fstab entry you're using.

aysiu: Do you happen to know that varying from that formula will produce the bahavior mentioned? After all, dystopian's fstab line must be pretty close. The only thing that could vary is the options. (Character encoding and umask.) I'd personally like to know how varying or leaving off any of these could produce the stated behavior.
 
Old 10-07-2005, 12:02 AM   #5
dystopian
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My fstab line:

Code:
/dev/hde3        /media/stuff      vfat       umask=1000,quiet       0 0
I'll try the unhide option and see if that helps.

Thanks.
 
Old 10-07-2005, 12:10 AM   #6
aysiu
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Quote:
Originally posted by Simon Bridge
I'd personally like to know how varying or leaving off any of these could produce the stated behavior.
Have you read this?

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html
 
Old 10-07-2005, 12:37 AM   #7
jschiwal
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I thought about an experiment. Can you unhide the partition, boot into windows. Then reboot into windows. I am just curious whether it is the Windows boot process that is hiding the partition. I've only had this happen to me once, but it was caused by partition magic hiding the NTFS windows partition. (C: drive).

If the partition isn't hidden, what does fdisk -l say about the partition when you are in Linux?
 
Old 10-08-2005, 11:28 PM   #8
Simon Bridge
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The fstab line suggested by ubuntu guide:
/dev/hda1 /media/windows vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

The fstab line actually used:
/dev/hde3 /media/stuff vfat umask=1000,quiet 0 0


Spot the difference?
dystopian has enable suid and sgid, and left off sticky. You don't need to do this. iocharset is unspecified - but it'll just use system defaults.
You don't want to use "quiet" either since, presumably, you want to know about it when something goes wrong.

And fi-nally: aysiu ...... yes I have, actually. It contains nothing wot ain't in the man pages neither. Just how does this answer my question? vis:
Quote:
Originally posted by Simon Bridge
I'd personally like to know how varying or leaving off any of these (the umask or iocharset) could produce the stated behavior (partition "hidden" status changed on reboot).
 
  


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