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Problems with mounting fat32 partition in RHEL 5

I'm trying to mount a fat32 partition in RHEL 5 and it isn't working. First off, the OS doesn't just auto detect the partition and mount it, which I've seen it done in Fedora 9. I also tried the mount command and it says that it can't find dev/sda3 (which is the Fat32 drive) in /etc/fstab or in /etc/mtab.

Anyone have any sugestion on how to get this guy mounted? Its really important that I get this partition mounted.

Can you post the full command when you try to mount it on the command line and also the exact error output you are seeing?

Also, the output of fdisk, listing your partitions.

for this the same should hold true for red hat as fedora

Code:

su -

mkdir /mnt/fat32

mount -t vfat /mnt/fat32 /dev/sda3

and in fstab after dooing
mkdir /mnt/fat32

Code:

/dev/sdb3 /mnt/fat32 vfat defaults 0 0

the command I'm typing is

Code:

mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/sda3

which gets the error "mount: mount poing /mnt/sda3 does not exist"

The other command is

Code:

mount /dev/sda3

which gets the error "mount: can't find /dev/sda3 in /etc/fstab or /etcmtab"

When I run fdisk this is what I get:

Code:

Usage: fdisk [-l] [-b SSZ] [-u] device

E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda  (for the first IDE disk)

  or: fdisk /dev/sdc  (for the third SCSI disk)

  or: fdisk /dev/eda  (for the first PS/2 ESDI drive)

  or: fdisk /dev/rd/c0d0  or: fdisk /dev/ida/c0d0  (for RAID devices)

The purpose of this setup is this: I am needing to dual boot Windows XP and Red Hat on a higher end HP workstation laptop. I decided that the best way to move data between each OS was a small 10GB vfat(fat32) partition. I first tested this idea using fedora and it worked just fine without me having to do anything extra besides just creating the vfat partition.

This current problem started after I installed RHEL 5 in the previous fedora partition (which was formatted before RHEL was installed of course).

If anyone has any ideas on a better way on moving data between Windows and RHEL I'd really appreciate it. The only requirement that I have is that it has to be on the laptop and not through an external drive or some common server that both OS's use.

Thanks for the help!!!

John VV: I tried those commands and I got this error after doing

Code:

mount -t vfat /mnt/fat32 /dev/sda3

"mount: /mnt/fat32 is not a block device"

oops i flip/flopped it should read

Code:

su -

mkdir /mnt/fat32

mount -t vfat /dev/sda3/ mnt/fat32

you FIRST MUST make a folder to mount it at that is what
---------------
su -
mkdir /mnt/fat32
------------------
this dose

Yes I did that, but it either says /dev/sda3 doesn't exsist or that I don't have permission to access /dev/sda3, even though I'm logged in as root.

I downloaded gparted, it can see this partition, but it doesn't have a mount point, and I can't seem to figure out how to add a mount point for it via gparted.

As root, what is the output of:

# /sbin/fdisk -lu /dev/sda
# /sbin/fdisk -lu /dev/hda

Is this a ATA drive? then it should be /dev/hdaX, if SCSI or SATA or USB, etc, it most likely will be /dev/sdaX (where X is a number)

/sbin/fdisk -lu /dev/sda

Code:

/dev/sda1  *          63  117210239    58605088+  7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda2      117210240  197567369    40178565  83  Linux

/dev/sda3      197567370  218050244    10241437+  b  W95 FAT32

/dev/sda4      218050245  234436544    8193150    5  Extended

/dev/sda5      218050308  234436544    8193118+  82  Linux swap

/sbin/fdisk -lu /dev/hda shows nothing.

i am not 100% sure on red hat maybe the folder /mnt is not there
how about trying

Code:

su -

mkdir /mnt

mkdir /mnt/fat32

Quote:

but it either says /dev/sda3 doesn't exsist or that I don't have permission to access /dev/sda3, even though I'm logged in as root.

that is odd seeing as "/dev/sda3 197567370 218050244 10241437+ b W95 FAT32 "
is there
red hat should see the fat32 part. just like fedora did ???

Quote:

I decided that the best way to move data between each OS was a small 10GB vfat(fat32) partition.

on RHEL 5 you should be able to install ntfs-3g so red hat can just wright to the windows drive .windows still wont be able to see the red hat drive however .
or setup nfs, samba and transfer them .

I actually changed the drive from fat32 to ext2 and installed the ext2 patch in windows and that works.

Sadly though RHEL 5 doesn't seem to auto mount the drive, I have to mount it every time I boot up the OS, but it finds it and it works just fine via the /mnt directory.

I'd still rather do this with the fat32 file system rather then ext2, but it is working.

For some reason, I think that Red Hat does not turn on support for FAT32 in the kernel. At least they didn't used to, but I'm not sure if that is the case anymore.

that defiantly makes sense, even though it is a stupid way to go about it.

Thanks for all the help!

Quote:

Originally Posted by gyzer (Post 3261960)

that defiantly makes sense, even though it is a stupid way to go about it.

Thanks for all the help!

You could try to install the CentOS-plus kernel. FAT32, among other things like firewire are turned on by default. CentOS is binary compatible, so it should work without any problems.

I have no idea why, but on a different laptop, same model, with the same setup, I was able to mount the fat32 drive. No idea why