Hi All,
I'm having trouble with FC4 when mounting a Fat32 partition. Please tell me where I'm going wrong.

I have my fat32 partition mounted in fstab:-
<snip>
/dev/hda5 /mnt/data vfat gid=500,umask=007 0 0
<snip>

My user id is part of the group who's id is 500. Output from fdisk -l:-

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 7288 58540828+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 7544 19457 95699205 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 7289 7543 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda5 7544 19457 95699173+ b W95 FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdb: 61.4 GB, 61492838400 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7476 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 5099 40957686 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 5100 5354 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb3 5355 7476 17044965 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 5355 7477 17045563+ 83 Linux

This is the confusing part - if I go via the command line, as steve, I can create and delete files on the fat32 partition, but when I try to do the same in Nautilus I get an error saying 'Error "read only file system" creating new folder'... then if I try to do the same again via the command line I get:-
touch: cannot touch `test': Read-only file system

In fact I can't even create a file any more as root on the fat32 partition.

Any ideas?

One thing that has happened recently is good ol' XP trashed the partition info on hdb (and I don't know how to restore to rule this out), I can see the info via fdisk but not via the hardware browser in Gnome - hdb shows up in green with no partion info available. Needless to say XP has been kicked off my pc and won't be getting an invitation back!!

Thanks in advance, Steve.

AMD 64-bit Sempron
1gig memory
2.6.14-1.1656_FC4

Try this:

/dev/hda5 /mnt/data vfat gid=500,iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

Thanks duffmckagan, but unfortunately it didn't work (I've left the new settings in fstab though).

I've also just tried disconnecting hdb just in case the messed up partition info was having an affect - again no joy.

Did you do mount -a after changing the fstab?

If you did it,

Can you afford to remove gid=500 ?

If yes, remove it and again run "mount -a" .

Post back .

Still the same problem. Contents of /etc/fstab is now:-
# This file is edited by fstab-sync - see 'man fstab-sync' for details
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
/dev/shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sys /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/data vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0
# /dev/hdb1 /mnt/fc4 auto defaults 0 0
/dev/hdd /media/cdrom auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrecorder auto pamconsole,exec,noauto,managed 0 0

Output from fdisk -l (hdb still disconnected):-

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 7288 58540828+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 7544 19457 95699205 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 7289 7543 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda5 7544 19457 95699173+ b W95 FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Output from ls -lat in /mnt:-
[root@localhost mnt]# ls -lat
total 56
drwxrwxrwx 14 root root 32768 Jan 31 20:40 data
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jan 31 18:53 ..
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Jan 28 21:54 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 28 21:54 fc4

You jumble up all the data in your post.

Try to use proper formatting. There are Code and Quote tags which help a lot.

Ok, I've reformatted. Hopefully this is easier to read.

Still the same problem. Contents of /etc/fstab is now:-
Output from fdisk -l (hdb still disconnected):-
Output from ls -lat in /mnt:-