Mounting fat32 partition... wierd error msg.
 

I'm setting up a partition to swap files from my windows partion to my redhat 9 partition, and I put it on my USB harddrive. its Harddrive b, partition two. I have it all set up, so I try to mount it. Log in as root, password, go to console: I type:
mount -t vfat /dev/hdb2 /mnt/win

and get:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb2,
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?)


I made /mnt/win... what did I do wrong? I only have one harddrive mounted, so I don't think it's too many filesystem types, and its Fat32, so vfat is right- right?

what does "fdisk -l /dev/hdb" tell you about the contents of the drive?

well the command is correct for mounting fat drives, but i think you should actually check if hdb2 is the proper one..

when I do fdisk, I get "command not found"

first its located in the /sbin folder so you would issue the command like this:
/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdb
secondly, you have to be root to issue that command

*smacks self in face* Ok, I'll try that when I get into linux.

I do that, and it just goes to the next line like I typed nothing.

[root@localhost sbin]# /sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hdb
[root@localhost sbin]#

are you typing capital i or l ?

not an i its an l, or you can look at it as a small L ;-)

ok, thats what I did. I tried it again, and got the same message. Maybe it doesn't like the USB harddrive?

What do you get from 'ls -l /dev/hdb'? (And also /dev/hdc and /dev/hdd if they are CD/DVD-ROMs.)

Also, post the contents of /etc/fstab and /etc/modules.conf.

how bout this d00d just type as root:
/sbin/fdisk -l
and thats it.
in the system column you will see something like Win95 or whatever it is....and whatever it does end up being, i am sure it'll trigger you off and tell you what device is your win partition when you look in the corresponding first column.

haven't tried those yet, but it occured to me: would hdb be my cdrom/cdrw? If so... *smacks self on forehead again*

ok look, thats up to you to know that
hda = primary master
hdb = primary slave
hdc = secondary master
hdd = secondary slave
now, 9 outta 10 times if you see someones computer their cdroms, burners, dvd's, whatever they use, are typically set up on hdc, hdd, i mean its still going to work even if its on hdb, but like i said most of the time its on secondary...
only you will know what it is on, and if worse comes to worse, and you have no idea, or even have no idea what i am saying, then go to the /var/lib folder and look at the file dmesg, just open it up with a text editor....
or even though you will get a bit of output you could type
cat /var/log/dmesg |grep hd*
it will be a smaller output than looking in the file itself
and for example mine says:

hda: WDC WD600BB-32CCB0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 2F020J0, ATA DISK drive
hdc: WDC WD800BB-00CAA0, ATA DISK drive
hdd: AOPEN CD-RW CRW2040, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

so as you see hda, hdb, and hdc are harddisks and hdd is my burner..
so you will be able to find it this way also.

Insanely sorry, I've had a lot of shit going on in my life, so I haven't had time to work on this.

Anyway, I tried cat /var/log/dmesg |grep hd*, and got a bunch of stuff. HDA is my main HD (the one that has my windows and linux partitions, swap partitions, etc.)
HDB is my CD drive
It doesn't say anything about HDC or HDD, but it does mention usb.c, and it says:
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb-uhci.c: $Revision: 1.275 $ time 17:59:01 Mar 13 2003
usb-uhci.c: High bandwidth mode enabled
usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xbce0, IRQ 10
usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb-uhci.c: v1.275:USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
hub.c: new USB device 00:1f.2-1, assigned address 2
usb-uhci.c: interrupt, status 2, frame# 207
Vendor: ExcelSto Model: r Technology Rev: VA2O
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.

Sadly, I have no idea what any of this means...


To geoff_f's suggestion:

/etc/fstab says:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot 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
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0

and /etc/modules.conf is
alias eth0 e100
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
alias ieee1394-controller ohci1394
alias sound-slot-0 maestro3
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

sorry for the horrendously long post