Panasonic Toughbook cf-29 Dual boot MSDOS and Debian Squeeze, Fstab problem.

k3lt01 · 07-07-2012, 08:06 PM

I have just recently purchase a Panasonic Tougbook cf-29 and set it up with MSDOS and Debian Squeeze. Because the toughbook doesn't have a 3 1/2" floppy drive I need to be able to transfer files etc over from the Squeeze partition to the MSDOS partition. Every time I try I am getting an error saying I don't have permissions to do this. I have checked my fstab file and the MSDOS partition isn't listed at all so I am assuming this may be the culprit, my problem is I don't know what to place in my fstab file to make Squeeze let me place things in the MSDOS partition.

This is my fstab

Code:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=79113b21-4ea4-4cf5-9143-fab7a91ef438 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /home was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=c9f45ae4-f7b5-469e-9af3-a5ac4719a23b /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=83c5b399-d717-4d29-bd77-de677d94aa12 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

and this is my blkid

Code:

root@michael-toughbook:/home/michael# blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="D87A-34AA" TYPE="vfat" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="79113b21-4ea4-4cf5-9143-fab7a91ef438" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="83c5b399-d717-4d29-bd77-de677d94aa12" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sda7: UUID="c9f45ae4-f7b5-469e-9af3-a5ac4719a23b" TYPE="ext4" 
root@michael-toughbook:/home/michael#

I think I need to place the sda1 entry into the fstab but also set permissions so I can copy files over to it.

Any help greatly appreciated.

camorri · 07-07-2012, 08:21 PM

No need to update /etc/fstab. You should only need to mount the MSDOS partition. If you want this partition mounted at boot time, then yes, you need to add it to /etc/fstab.

Have a look at your Deb file system. Most systems have a /mnt directory. That is a good place to mount the partition. You have to make a empty directory where you want to mount the partition. ie in /mnt, 'mkdir sda1' ( you can call it anything you like ). Then as root, issue a mount command. 'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1' That should do it. If you get en error, you might have to specify the fstype. (vfat). See the man page for mount.

Permissions are not preserved when copying files to a vfat partition.

Only other thing I can think of, is if you still get permission issues, look at who owns the files, and groups.

k3lt01 · 07-07-2012, 08:52 PM

Thanks for your post. I have to mount it to see where I am trying to put the files and I get a permissions error that I why I thought the fstab may be the issue. You can also set permissions in fstab can't you?

syg00 · 07-08-2012, 12:38 AM

Read (all of) this.

k3lt01 · 07-08-2012, 02:26 AM

Thanks for that syg00, i'll give it a go tonight.