[lug] DOS Support?

[Bob Bisch]

> 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.

RH 7.2 comes with module support for FAT partitions, so you don't have 
to replace the kernel or anything.

If your DOS partition is the first partition on the drive (likely), 
it'll be /dev/hda1.  So, to mount it under Linux, just do the following 
as root:

# mount /dev/hda1 -t vfat /mnt/dos

(This assumes you have a path under Linux at /mnt/dos, where you want to 
access the files.)

IIRC, you don't even need the "-t vfat" (which specifies the type of 
partition) because newer versions of mount will auto-detect it.

If you don't know what partition the DOS volume is on, you can always 
use fdisk to find out:

# fdisk /dev/hda

Type 'p' at the "Command" prompt, and you'll see a list of partitions:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4866 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             1       510   4096543+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2   *       511       638   1028160   83  Linux
/dev/hda3           639       671    265072+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda4           672      4866  33696337+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5           672      1436   6144831   83  Linux
/dev/hda6          1437      2201   6144831   83  Linux
/dev/hda7          2202      3221   8193118+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8          3222      3349   1028128+  83  Linux
/dev/hda9          3350      3859   4096543+   c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda10         3860      4866   8088696   83  Linux

On my system, then, DOS has /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda9.

HTH,
Bob