Mounting of FAT32, or NTFS filesystems

Support knowledgebase (maddin_vfat32)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: Version 5.1
This article refers to an older version of SuSE Linux. Therefore some of the informations given in this article may be outdated or the article may contain stale links.

Kernel: Versions since 2.0.33

Project:

You have Windows95 and/or NT using FAT32 filesystem installed on your Linux machine.

You want to access these partitions from Linux.

Question: What happened to the Joliet-CD-Filesystem?

Situation:

There are kernel extensions for both filesystems (with little documentation). Anyway, these drivers are considered early Beta. They're still under development.

You should mount these filesystems read only, even if the FAT32 driver supports read-write capabilities.

Due to security and stability reasons we did not include these drivers into our standard kernels.

So to use these drivers you will have to apply a kernel patch.

Information may be found on:

http://www-plateau.cs.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html
http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~loewis/ntfs

Since »S.u.S.E. Linux« 5.1 these patches are included on the first CD in the subdirectory /unsorted/patches. The file itself is called kernel-patches.tgz. You may unpack this archive by entering:

        installpkg .../unsorted/patches/kernel-patches.tgz

Now you can find the several patches under /usr/src/kernel-patches.

The driver for the FAT32 filesystems even supports the Joliet-CD-Filesystem.

Important!!!

Please be aware that we NEITHER support the patches NOR the kernel that you applied the patches to, NOR any problems that occur!

As far as we know there is no fips for resizing FAT32 partitions. - Feedback welcome!

Furthermore you should keep in mind that the use of these patches might damage either your Windows95 /Win NT data, as well as your Linux data!

Usage of the supplied Windows95 VFAT drivers is ok, as it is based on the FAT16 filesystem.


Keywords: FAT32, VFAT, MOUNTEN, WINDOWS95, WIN95, WINDOWS, NTFS, WINNT, JOLIET

Categories: Other Operating Systems

SDB-maddin_vfat32, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 16. Apr 1997
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 14. Apr 1999 by Martin.Scherbaum (sdb_gen 1.40.0)