Cannot mount Windows FAT32 partition
 

My apologies for the most classic of classic newbie problems, but I really am clueless.

I want to mount a FAT32 partition (created under Win XP) into Linux (RH 8). Bill Gates got one IDE hard drive (hda) with 2 NTFS and 1 FAT 32 partition. Linus has the other hardrive all to himself:

[derek@localhost etc]$ cat fstab
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/data /data ext3 defaults 1 2
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/tmp /tmp ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdb7 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3 vfat sw 0 0

As you can see, I added an entry to /etc/fstab and also created a local mount directory. But ....

[root@localhost etc]# mount /dev/hda3
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda3,
or too many mounted file systems
(could this be the IDE device where you in fact use
ide-scsi so that sr0 or sda or so is needed?)

What could be the problem?
- The fs is correct ?
- The options are good ?
- I don't know what a superblock is - but the drive works under XP
- Too many mounted file systems? How many is too many?

Thank you,

Derek

Could you enlighten me what the sw stand for? I couldn't find reference to it. My fstab entry looks like this:and it works fine. The 'users' option allows any user to mount or umount it, regardless of which user mounted it in the first place.

HTH

i read through that whole thing till i got to the sw
at the bottom. i wish i had checked the answer first.
the sw means for mount to try to mount the drive,
but tell you you can't because of a bad option, or
in other words, its not an option. you meant rw.

Regardless of the fstab entries or switches, the mount command should still mount the filesystem.

On boot, I see an error emanating from the processing of fstab. In addition to the non-specific mount error (e.g., "mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda3, or too many mounted file systems ..."), it says: "cannot read boot partition" (if memory serves me correctly).

I attempted to mount the other (NTFS) partitions on the Bill Gates hard disk (created under Windows XP), but Linux reports that the kernel is not compiled with NTFS support.

So, I am back to square one - why in the world can't my RH 8 Linux see a FAT32 partition on another hard disk?

Thanks,

Derek

Try using Linux's fdisk to see if it can even see it...
fdisk -l /dev/hda
Post the output?

to be sure, you're saying this doesn't work

mkdir /poop
mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /poop
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /poop
mount -t vfat /dev/hda2 /poop

if you do have 2 ntfs partitions and 1 fat32,
on the primary master, this will not be able
to mount the ntfs drives and only the fat32
will end up mounted.

Eh?

If you have an ntfs partition, you can't mount it with -t vfat anyway! And you certainly shouldn't be mounting filesystems over eachother - that's just plain daft.

i just did that incase his fat32 partition wasn't the one
he thought. I don't want it to mount unless its his fat32.
if he gets an error message for all 3, then we'd see.
i expected at most only one of those commands to work.
this is for testing, not for use.
i often accidently mount a partition on top of another one.
sometimes i accidenlty type mount dev/hda8 / mnt/hda8.
i just have to umount /dev/hda8 and do it over.

Aha! I expected that the 3 windows partitions I created would have been called hda1, hda2, and hda3 .... but noooooo!


Thank you all! fdisk reveals the state of the drive and hda6 mounts just fine.


# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2550 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2551 9728 57657285 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 2551 5100 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 5101 7650 20482843+ b Win95 FAT32

logical drives in an extended partition start at 5 and go up.