I have an mp3 player (iriver ifp-300) that will only allow FAT formatting. I have no problem mounting fat32 filesystems in linux but have not had to mount FAT fs until now. I put the line

/dev/sdb2 /mnt/mp3 vfat noauto,users 0 0

in fstab and the device would mount, but the folders and files were unrecognizable. I changed the line to:

/dev/sdb2 /mnt/mp3 fat noauto,users 0 0

blindly hoping that would be correct, but i then get the following error message:

mount: fs type fat not supported by kernel

I've got slack 10 with the 2.4.26 kernel. I'd have thought that it would support FAT....

What do I need to do to be able to mount FAT fs?

vfat is the device driver to support both FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems.

The most likely problem is that your mount-point is wrong; many such devices only use one partition, in which case it would be /dev/sdb1 not sdb2. Also, sdb is the second SCSI (or USB mass storage) device; make sure you have the right one.

The fact that you use the word “unrecognizable” implies that you are seeing files and directories with strange names (unusual characters). In which case, you have the wrong codepage selected; you'll probably want something like UTF8 or Unicode (at a guess).

You can change this in the options column of the fstab entry; A list of options for vfat can be found in the file /usr/src/linux/Documentation/filesystems/vfat.h

eg.

I use sdb2 because I have my camera mount on sdb1 in fstab. This is what I get when I plug the mp3 player in:


Nov 14 20:51:22 sbc kernel: sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb4

so I just picked sdb2 and it does mount there without error messages. I can change to the mp3 directory. when I list contents, I get the following (in part):

? °ntldr °ntldr »?.ý}ë ë<?msdos.5.0 ë<?msdos.5.0 at2nt??Ç. ;û at2nt??Ç. ;û estart?? f??f??v?.?f? f??f??v?.?f? ?Ѽð{?Ù¸ ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? °ntldr °ntldr »?.ý}ë ë<?msdos.5.0 ë<?msdos.5.0 at2nt??Ç. ;û estart?? estart?? f??f??v?.?f? f??f??v?.?f? ?Ѽð{?Ù¸ ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? °ntldr »?.ý}ë »?.ý}ë ë<?msdos.5.0 ë<?msdos.5.0 at2nt??Ç. ;û estart?? estart?? f??f??v?.?f? f??f??v?.?f? ?Ѽð{?Ù¸ ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? ?ô?v$Í?a.ar? °ntldr »?.ý}ë »?.ý}ë ë<?msdos.5.0 ë<?ms

I've tried the utf8 option as you listed, to no effect.

What happens when you try it with sdb4?

Also, just looking at this text, it looks like the filesystem is encrypted; at least .ar? looks like it should be .mp3. This isn't UTF8 or unicode, but it might be some other codepage.

You might have to use one of the crypto loopback device options to make this work; I don't have any details to hand but I'd recommend looking through the kernel documentation for options etc.

I'm not at my computer now, so I cannot try /sdb4, but why would the mount point make a difference? I agree that it looks like a conversion problem. I'll look at the kernel documentation when I get home. I'm just surprised I'm having a problem with FAT conversion.

The mount point won't make any difference, but the device file you use is set by the kernel, and that must be correct. The device file is /dev/sdb2 or /dev/sdb4. The mount point can be almost anything , but usually starts with /mnt/ or /media/

If you get the device file wrong, you'll be trying to mount the wrong device, or the wrong partition/filesystem. I can imagine an mp3 player might use both encrypted and non-encrypted mount-points, for example.

Ok, I figured it out. The line in dmesg pertaining to my mp3 player was

Nov 14 20:51:22 sbc kernel: sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb4

I was trying to mount /dev/sdb2 in fstab. I needed to mount /dev/sdb