USB Drive in 8.3 File Format
 

I'm just getting to grips with Slackware after spending time in SuSE and Yellow Dog and so far so good. It's fast, stable and I found it easy to install on an Evo 510 SFF. I do have a question regarding my USB pen drive.

I edited my /etc/fstab to include:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/gizmo vfat noauto,users,rw 0 0

I created the gizmo directory in /mnt/ and a desktop shortcut to it. To mount and unmount I right click the icon and that's it.

Only thing is that KDE displays my folders in a truncated DOS 8.3 name convention. I know that the drive is formatted as FAT but SuSE and other distros could display the long names.

Is there a way in Slackware to amend this behaviour so I can avoid folder names such as "applic~1"?

Thanks for any pointers.

dkpw

Check that the USB drive is actually being mounted as vfat - type - and check the output for that partition. It might be falling back on a different type if you're lacking something in the kernel.

Cheers,

mj

Thanks MJ,

Here's the output from the mount command and the last line shows the problem - it's mounted as an MSDOS volume despite what /etc/fstab says.

The above output is achieved with the pen drive mounted using my desktop alias of /mnt/gizmo. If I use the command line to mount the drive.

the output changes to

and the drive is back to its long-named splendour.

I have created a small shell script to mount the drive and when I open alias long names are displayed. While this works, it doesn't seem neat.

Can MJ or anyone else suggest why fstab is being "ignored" and can I get a one step process from the desktop?

Kind regards,

dkpw

Re: USB Drive in 8.3 File Format
 

I suspect that this may be your problem. Under KDE, you need to create a new link to a device, not to a directory. I.e., right click on the desktop -> Create new -> Device -> Hard disk, and then select your fstab entry from the drop-down box on the third tab (Devices).

Somehow it's using the 'auto' option instead of directly specifying vfat, when mounting at the same time as opening the directory, and failing miserably ;)

Cheers,

mj

Thanks again MJ,

I hear what you're saying about creating a link to a device rather than a directory. Unfortunately that's what I did.

Just to make sure, I created a new link with the drive mounted as a vfat device rather than an MSDOS device. This regrettably did not make a difference.

As you say it seems indifferent to my wishes.
I have a workaround at least thanks to your help, it's just there must be something else going on....

Kind regards,

dkpw