[lug] DOS Support?

D. Stimits stimits at idcomm.com
Thu Jul 25 14:48:57 MDT 2002


Fred Robinson wrote:
> I want to be able to access my Windows DOS partition (FAT32) from Red Hat
> 7.2.  Can someone walk me through adding DOS support such that I can mount
> the DOS partitions on my dual boot machine?
> 
> It's been a while, but if I recall you have to install an RPC for it and
> replace the kernel.

You will want vfat support in the kernel. Many of the install kernels 
already support that, YMMV. Just try it and see if it works.

Assuming the partition is /dev/hdb1 (contrived example), and is not 
already mounted, create a mount point:
cd /mnt/
mkdir windows

(you might even want to cd windows, and mkdir C, since an extra parent 
directory gives you more control over permissions...useful only on 
multi-user systems, the reason being that a mounted vfat partition 
forces the mount point to use the permission options of only the 
filesystem type mounted. That filesystem type vfat has no permission 
options of its own, though there are mount options to deal with it)

mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/windows

Then you can cd to windows and enjoy. Be sure to umount /dev/hdb1 after 
you have cd'd out of the windows partition, else it won't let you umount.

D. Stimits, stimits @ idcomm.com





More information about the LUG mailing list