[CentOS] Can't mount FAT32 partition

Tue Aug 30 03:21:02 UTC 2005
Sean O'Connell <oconnell at soe.ucsd.edu>

On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 11:56 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> Thanks for following up.
> 
> >possibilities:
> >
> >- mount is not made by same user doing cd /mnt/windows
> >  
> >
> I edited /etc/fstab as root, and ran the mount -a command as root.
> But I have a regular user account "dave" for day to day use.
> But whether I am accessing /mnt/windows as root or as dave, it comes up 
> empty.
> 
> >- mount is not made by same user running gnome/nautilus
> >  
> >
> This is the case. Root is mounting the drive, and dave is running 
> gnome/nautilus.
> But I'm a little confused. Only root has the permission to edit 
> /etc/fstab or run the mount command, so how would dave access these 
> functions?
> In any case, as mentioned, even root finds the directory empty.
> 
> >- mount references /dev/hda1 but hard drive has different device
> >assignment
> >  
> >
> I assumed it was /dev/hda1 because this is what fdisk told me:
> 
> Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hda1   *           1        3649    29310561    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
> 
> >dmesg| less #check to see if the drive is assigned a different letter
> >  
> >
> This came up with a bunch of stuff. Is this what I'm looking for?:
> hda: max request size: 128KiB
> hda: 58633344 sectors (30020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=58168/16/63, UDMA(66)
> hda: cache flushes not supported
>  hda: hda1
> 
> >df -h shows mounted filesystems and usage
> >  
> >
> [root at localhost ~]# df -h
> Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hdb1              28G   20G  6.6G  76% /
> none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
> 
> >are you user 512?
> >  
> >
> I don't know. But I want any user of this computer - in other words, me, 
> regardless of what permissions setting or log in account I happen to be 
> using - to access the drive.
> 
> >are you running mount as yourself and not root?
> >  
> >
> This is what happens if I do:
> [dave at localhost ~]$ mount -a
> mount: only root can do that
> As mentioned before, I was doing all the configurations as root, because 
> I assumed I had to be root in order to be mucking about with the drives 
> and whatnot.
> 
> >has the drive been fixed with scandisk/checkdisk since the assault by
> >linux fsck?
> >  
> >
> Heh heh... "assault". I like that.
> Anyway... I think so. I ran Windows, and it immediately complained about 
> the disk and ran scandisk which seemed to have worked as Windows could 
> read the files okay, or at least run the programs associated with those 
> files. A lot of files got "assaulted", so at this point I can't be 100% 
> sure that they've all been corrected. But from a Windows world point of 
> view the disk has been scanned and corrected.
> 
> >short answer, it shouldn't make a difference being connected via
> >internal IDE or external firewire except as external firewire, it would
> >be assigned something more like /dev/sda instead of /dev/hda
> >  
> >
> Okay, good to know it's not a connection issue, and more likely a 
> settings issue.

Dave-

Rather than editing /etc/fstab and adding a lot of mount flags to the
mix, start with the basics. Can you do the following as root:

mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

If yes, then it is a matter of working out the proper flags. If not,
then the file system could be corrupt. When you try the mount command
above, do you see any errors in /var/log/messages or dmesg output?

-- 
Sean