[SOLVED] strange exfat behavior

av2zeal · 09-12-2015, 01:06 AM

I have a 256GB sdcard that I am trying to access.
I installed fuse-exfat and exfat-utils from SBo.
When i try to mount my sdcard this way:

Code:

$sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdcard
mount: unknown filesystem type 'exfat'

error. But, when i try to mount it this way:

Code:

$sudo mount.exfat-fuse /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdcard
FUSE exfat 1.2.0

it works. I can access the card and manipulate files via /mnt/sdcard.
Did I missing something here? (possibly a configuration/setup step)
Do I need to link mount.exfat-fuse to mount -t exfat somehow?

*Note* I tried this post-reboot to make sure the OS didn't need to configure something... and received the same results.

My real ask here is that ideally, I would like it to work with "mount -t exfat" so it plays nice with Thunar or any other program for that matter. TIA.

Didier Spaier · 09-12-2015, 02:37 AM

"man mount" says:

Quote:

-t, --types vfstype
The argument following the -t is used to indicate the filesystem type. The filesystem types which are currently supported include: adfs, affs, autofs, cifs, coda, coherent, cramfs, debugfs, devpts, efs, ext, ext2, ext3, ext4, hfs, hfsplus, hpfs, iso9660, jfs, minix,
msdos, ncpfs, nfs, nfs4, ntfs, proc, qnx4, ramfs, reiserfs, romfs, squashfs, smbfs, sysv, tmpfs, ubifs, udf, ufs, umsdos, usbfs, vfat, xenix, xfs, xiafs. Note that coherent, sysv and xenix are equivalent and that xenix and coherent will be removed at some point in the
future use sysv instead. Since kernel version 2.1.21 the types ext and xiafs do not exist anymore. Earlier, usbfs was known as usbdevfs. Note, the real list of all supported filesystems depends on your kernel.

As you can see (and assuming that the man page be accurate) the filesystem type exfat is not supported by the mount command.

mount.exfat-fuse is a specific command provided by exfat.

MadMaverick9 · 09-12-2015, 03:42 AM

And from that same man page:

Quote:

In order to make it possible to treat all types in a uniform way, mount will execute the program /sbin/mount.TYPE (if that exists) when called with type TYPE.

Is the type "exfat"? No. So the "mount -t exfat ..." command will not work of course.

The type is "exfat-fuse" (as shown by this command "mount.exfat-fuse /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdcard", which ran fine). So the following command should work:

Code:

mount -t exfat-fuse /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdcard

Proof of concept example:

Code:

$ mount -t davfs /dev/sde1 /media/TEST
/sbin/mount.davfs: can't evaluate path of mount point (null)

I specify "-t davfs" on the command line, but it actually runs "/sbin/mount.davfs".

goumba · 09-12-2015, 04:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by av2zeal

My real ask here is that ideally, I would like it to work with "mount -t exfat" so it plays nice with Thunar or any other program for that matter. TIA.

Code:

ln -s mount.exfat-fuse mount.exfat

Diantre · 09-12-2015, 04:09 AM

The problem seems to be that the package fuse-exfat installs /usr/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse, but mount looks for /sbin/mount.exfat.

Creating a symlink works for me:

Code:

# ln -s /usr/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse /sbin/mount.exfat

MadMaverick9 · 09-12-2015, 04:20 AM

As a quick search shows, this is actually an old problem.
Post on Gentoo forum from Sep 2012.

There seems to be a mismatch between what Thunar wants and what fuse-exfat provides. Strange.

Mark Pettit · 09-12-2015, 04:32 AM

My exfat was built from the SBO utilities. It seems to have just "done the right thing" :

root@marklap:/etc/openvpn# ls -al /sbin/mount.exfat
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 May 11 14:29 /sbin/mount.exfat -> mount.exfat-fuse*

/var/log/packages/exfat-utils-0.9.6-x86_64-1_SBo
/var/log/packages/fuse-exfat-0.9.6-x86_64-1_SBo

I kinda expected that to be the case :-)

Diantre · 09-12-2015, 04:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Pettit

My exfat was built from the SBO utilities. It seems to have just "done the right thing" :

root@marklap:/etc/openvpn# ls -al /sbin/mount.exfat
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 May 11 14:29 /sbin/mount.exfat -> mount.exfat-fuse*

/var/log/packages/exfat-utils-0.9.6-x86_64-1_SBo
/var/log/packages/fuse-exfat-0.9.6-x86_64-1_SBo

I kinda expected that to be the case :-)

I have installed fuse-exfat-1.2.0-x86_64-1_SBo, and it puts mount.exfat-fuse in /usr/sbin:

File list:

Code:

usr/
usr/sbin/
usr/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse
usr/doc/
usr/doc/fuse-exfat-1.2.0/
usr/doc/fuse-exfat-1.2.0/fuse-exfat.SlackBuild
usr/doc/fuse-exfat-1.2.0/COPYING
usr/doc/fuse-exfat-1.2.0/ChangeLog
usr/doc/fuse-exfat-1.2.0/README
install/
install/doinst.sh
install/slack-desc

doinst.sh

Code:

( cd usr/sbin ; rm -rf mount.exfat )
( cd usr/sbin ; ln -sf mount.exfat-fuse mount.exfat )

av2zeal · 09-12-2015, 12:27 PM

Code:

av2zeal@darkstar:/usr/sbin$ ls -la mount*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    16 Sep 11 21:30 mount.exfat -> mount.exfat-fuse*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 48472 Sep 11 21:30 mount.exfat-fuse*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 24199 May 21  2013 mountstats*

I found it odd that I don't see any of the other filesystem mount commands, so I checked /sbin:

Code:

av2zeal@darkstar:/sbin$ ls -la mount*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     12 Aug 29 04:36 mount -> ../bin/mount*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  36912 Jun 25  2012 mount.cifs*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8328 Jan 30  2011 mount.fuse*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     15 Aug 29 04:36 lontfs-3g -> /bin/lontfs-3g*
-r-s--x--x 1 root root 111232 May 21  2013 mount.nfs*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     13 Aug 29 04:36 mount.ntfs -> mount.ntfs-3g*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     12 Aug 29 04:36 mount.ntfs-3g -> /bin/ntfs-3g*

so I did:

Code:

av2zeal@darkstar:/sbin$ sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/mount.exfat-fuse mount.exfat

and voila! works as intended. Still curious as to why it couldn't see it in /usr/sbin. Either way, thank you all! Marking as solved.