Linux 2.6 vfat mounting problem

thorwil · 12-22-2003, 04:27 AM

Hi!

Linux 2.6 will not mount my vfat data partition:

Code:

wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdc1, or too many mounted file systems.

From dmesg:

Code:

FAT: invalid first entry of FAT (0xffffff8 != 0xfffff00) 
 VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev hdc1.

There was no problem with some previous versions 2.5 and some betas. Old 2.4 has no problem with mounting.
fsck.vfat on 2.4 says everything fine, but under 2.6 it complains alot. (I do not have that output.) Letting it try to repair doesn't fix the problem.
Can it be that 2.6 is correct and 2.4 just ignores a problem?
Any ideas on how to solve the problem?

TheOneKEA · 12-22-2003, 05:54 AM

The 2.6 vfat driver is more strict when checking for the FAT superblock; the 2.4 driver is not. There are patches floating around which relax these checks and allow the 2.6 vfat driver to mount these filesystems - the 2.6 driver is actually wrong, compared to the behavior of the 2.4 driver.

thorwil · 12-22-2003, 06:54 AM

Thanks!

But I can't find anything about such patches. Google, LKML, KernelNewbies: nothing. Searched for combinations of "linux", "2.6", "vfat", "patch" on google and tried "vfat", "fat" and "fat32" on lkml.org.

So where should I look or what should I search for more precisely?

TheOneKEA · 12-22-2003, 02:53 PM

http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-kernel/

http://www.lib.uaa.alaska.edu/linux-...k-42/1060.html

That's probably what you want.

thorwil · 12-22-2003, 03:31 PM

Thank you very much!

I somehow managed to miss that on my LKML search.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think I formated with mkfs.vfat, not from windows. Maybe thats rather uncommon, so that this didn't happen to a lot of other dual booters.

thorwil · 12-23-2003, 03:37 AM

Windows chkdsk found and corrected many problems on the filesystem. So allthough everything seemed to be working fine under 2.4, 2.6 was right to complain. Now there's no problem with mounting.

TheOneKEA · 12-23-2003, 06:52 AM

Great job