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Old 11-09-2010, 11:55 PM   #1
xenorealm
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Registered: Oct 2010
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Information on FAT file system in Linux


Hi guys,

I heard that EFSL(Embedded Filesystems Library) is great to use SD or flash in Linux. Is this true? Are there any other library that you recommend that do the same?

I still don't understand about umsdos, msdos, vfat. Is these drivers needed?

Thanks in advance.
x3n0
 
Old 11-15-2010, 07:11 AM   #2
rylan76
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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Potchefstroom, South Africa
Distribution: Fedora 17 - 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xenorealm View Post
Hi guys,

I heard that EFSL(Embedded Filesystems Library) is great to use SD or flash in Linux. Is this true? Are there any other library that you recommend that do the same?
Not sure what you mean, but if you have a recent stock kernel from most any generally available distro, flash drives and USB should work automagically. You should be able to just pop the flash drive / disk into a USB port and access it just like you'd do in Windows.

Quote:
I still don't understand about umsdos, msdos, vfat. Is these drivers needed?

Thanks in advance.
x3n0
These are not necessarily drivers as such. Depending on your installation they might be implemented as kernel modules or are integral to the kernel. Basically what these are are just "ways" for Linux to access MS-DOS formatted disks / floppies (if you even know what those are - ancient stuff!) or Windows formatted disks (VFAT). Usually when you compile a kernel you can turn these off and on in the filesystems section of the kernel configuration. Most modern stock kernels (as far as I'm aware) will have these compiled-in natively.

E. g. you do not as such need to load drivers to access MS-DOS or Windows disks - for example, if you put an old MS-DOS floppy in "Drive A" (Windows / Dos nomenclature) you should be able, as root, to do:

Code:
# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy -tmsdos
and then have the contents of the floppy disk available at /mnt/floppy (you'll need to create the /mnt/floppy yourself beforehand, though.)

Conversely, if you have an old Windows VFAT partition (VFAT has been superseded almost everywhere by NTFS) you can access it like this, as root:

Code:
# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win -tvfat
After, of course, first creating a "win" directory in your /mnt directory.

Accessing a NTFS parition is (currently) done a little differently. On my FC11 system for example, I get access to my NTFS (Windows XP) partition by doing

Code:
# ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/win
Which uses FUSE (File System in User Space) to read and write NTFS instead of integrated kernel or kernel module functions.

Hope this helps. Please post with more detail what exactly your questions are, the above is a bit... vague.

Kind regards,
 
Old 11-16-2010, 07:56 PM   #3
xenorealm
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Registered: Oct 2010
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Post Thank you for your reply

>recent stock kernel from most any generally available distro, flash >drives and USB should work automagically.

I know if I use any distro, I can use them, but I want to learn the system. What kind of library they use for read/access/write FAT. The fast way is to look into the kernel itself and check, but they are a tons of open source library in the net, and I just want to hear people opinion about these libraries.
As far as I checked, people love to use ESFL, others prefer FATfs (even though only support FAT32) and many more.

>Please post with more detail what exactly your questions are, the above >is a bit... vague.

Yes. I agree with you. It is kinda vague. Because I don't know how to ask people about this. Usually u get a distro and everything is working and you don't have to know what's going on in the low level. I am investigating the low level stuff(e.g kernel, middleware).

>Hope this helps.

Yes. I have the clear picture of VFAT, umsdos, thingy. Thank you very much.
 
  


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