Having trouble mounting a vfat partition on my slave hard drive

eyebrowsoffire · 09-16-2004, 10:00 PM

I'm really new to linux, so bear with me. I just switched over from XP to Red Hat Linux, but I wanted to keep all my files from my slave drive (which was a fat32). However, it wasn't in my computer when I installed linux, and that might be part of the problem. Another part of it is that both my hard drives are plugged into a PCI card so that i can get the full potential out of my slave drive (its almost 200 GB). Because it's plugged into this card, my master is called "hde" and my slave is called "hdf", so the partition I want to mount is "hdf1". Anyway, this does show up in my hardware browser as a fat32 partition, so, I tried to mount it like this:

"mount -t vfat /dev/hdf1 /mnt/slave"

When I do this, however, it comes back with something like this:

"wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdf1 or too many mounted file systems"

I know that I have the right file system type, I've seen this exact syntax used a million times in a million help files, so it can't be a bad option, I dont think its a bad superblock (also, I was under the impression the superblock was only for detecting what file system the partition had and since I already specified the file system, there wouldn't be a problem, but I'm new so I'm not sure) and it can't be too many mounted file systems because i've tried it when there are only 3 filesystems mounted. Can anyone help me? I'm kind of stuck.

-- eyebrowsoffire

CroMagnon · 09-16-2004, 11:14 PM

What is the output of 'fdisk -l /dev/hdf' ?

eyebrowsoffire · 09-17-2004, 12:18 AM

Disk /dev/hdf: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdf1 * 1 24321 195358401 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

Is that what you were looking for?

eyebrowsoffire · 09-17-2004, 06:45 PM

If I can't get my hard drive to work well with linux like this, does anyone know of a way to convert a partition to ext3?

michaelk · 09-17-2004, 11:02 PM

I've seen other posts where people have had problems mounting large vfat partitions and others not. I brief search couldn't dig anything up. AFAIK there isn't any method of converting over to a linux filesystem without loosing data. How full is the drive? If you could split it up in to smaller chunks I think that might work.

CroMagnon · 09-18-2004, 12:56 PM

eyebrowsoffire - have you compiled your own kernel? I can see an option under device drivers, block devices called "Support for large block devices". I don't have a 200GB partition, so it might or might not help you, but it's worth looking into. If you haven't compiled a kernel but would like to give it a try to see if a custom kernel will solve this, check google for a kernel HOWTO.

If you want to try splitting your windows partition, have a look for a recent version of FIPS.

michaelk · 09-18-2004, 02:59 PM

What kernel version are you running?
What is the output of
uname -r

eyebrowsoffire · 09-18-2004, 03:17 PM

"2.4.20-8" it says. Do some versions of the kernel not support large vfat partitions?

BTW, thanks all for the help. I hadn't thought of splitting up my partition, but it might be a good idea. Thanks.

michaelk · 09-18-2004, 06:00 PM

I came across the link below and that the patch was included in the 2.4.xx? kernel. Now I can't find the message on which kernel.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/31/29

Might have to plow through the kernel logs...
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...angeLog-2.4.25

eyebrowsoffire · 09-18-2004, 08:04 PM

v2.4.25-pre6 to v2.4.25-pre7. Should I just get a patch to update my kernel then?, seeing as i only have 2.4.20-8?

michaelk · 09-18-2004, 11:24 PM

I should think so.

eyebrowsoffire · 10-05-2004, 12:17 AM

Okay, I installed the new kernel, after much struggle. I am going to try to lay out all the information I have about my problem right here, so here we go.

I am running Red Hat Linux 9. I began with some version of the kernel 2.4.20. I had major trouble mounting my slave drive. My system is set up as follows: I have 2 hard drives hooked up to a PCI card. The first, my master, has the three partitions on it that run linux. It is roughly 10GB. The second, my slave, has one huge vfat partition that is about 200GB. They are identified as /dev/hde and /dev/hdf. Here is the output of "fdisk -l":

Code:

Disk /dev/hde: 10.2 GB, 10248118272 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1245 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1   *         1        13    104391   83  Linux
/dev/hde2            14      1188   9438187+  83  Linux
/dev/hde3          1189      1245    457852+  82  Linux swap
 
Disk /dev/hdf: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdf1   *         1     24321 195358401    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

When I tried to mount /dev/hdf1, here is what happened:

Code:

# mount -t vfat /dev/hdf1 /mnt/slave
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdf1,
       or too many mounted file systems

It was brought to my attention in this thread vfat partitions of over 128GB were not supported until the kernel 2.4.25. So, I updated my kernel to 2.4.27. After doing this, the same problem occured. At first, I thought that I might have screwed up while making the config for it, but I discussed this in another thread (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...postid=1215787) for a while with dalek and Chinaman, who were very helpful and supportive. I am still not sure what is causing the problem, but I now think that support for large vfat partitions wouldn't have been separate from the support for vfat partitions in general. We have been googling this all over the place, and finding a lot of people with similar problems to mine, but it is hard to find any solutions. I know I've already learned something from all this: KEEP AWAY FROM VFAT PARTITIONS. But I don't want to lose all my data, so I'm hoping I can eventually convert the partition over to ext3 or something. Does anyone have any information about this? One suggestion was to try changing to a 2.6 kernel, which is a possibility, but I wanted to hear some opinions before I dove face first into 2.6 land...
Thanks for all your help! Any information you have is helpful.

Bruce Hill · 10-05-2004, 01:48 AM

Can you post the output of "cat /etc/fstab" once again using the Code button?

And will you also post the output of "ls -alc /mnt/slave" if you don't mind?

eyebrowsoffire · 10-05-2004, 01:55 AM

Okie dokie. Here we go, output of "cat /etc/fstab":

Code:

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/hde3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
/dev/cdrom              /mnt/cdrom              udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1             /mnt/cdrom1             udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/hdf1               /mnt/slave              vfat    defaults        0 0

Now, the output of "ls -alc /mnt/slave":

Code:

total 8
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Sep 16 19:20 .
drwxr-xr-x    5 root     root         4096 Sep 16 19:20 ..

I unfortunately don't know what this second one is. What is it?

Bruce Hill · 10-05-2004, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by eyebrowsoffire

I unfortunately don't know what this second one is. What is it?

You should read the manual page for ls for the arguments (-alc). Issue "man ls" but this is the gist of it:

Quote:

The program ls lists first its non-directory file arguments, and then for each directory argument all listable files contained within that directory.

Thanks for posting /etc/fstab - btw, the first time for this thread. ;-)

I'll have to read and learn, but there are some things that look strange to me.
For instance, there is nothing actually mounting to /dev/pts, /proc, and /dev/shm

I'm assuming that since your distro is RedHat, you're using GRUB rather than LILO?

Would you be willing to try something different with that drive in /etc/fstab? Just for
the sake of tesing, replace your current line of

Code:

/dev/hdf1        /mnt/slave              vfat    defaults        0 0

with

Code:

/dev/hdf1        /mnt/slave            vfat        user,umask=1000,rw,auto      1   0

and you don't have to remove your present line, just comment it out (put # in front of it)
and then go to the end of it and put the other line next. If this doesn't help, you can just
uncomment it (remove the #) and remove the new line.

After doing that, try to mount your drive again, but this time as a normal user, with the
command "mount /mnt/slave" and if the output is different, please post.

I have a theory, but don't know how to articulate it at the moment...