Re: BDI

["Dean L. Hedin" <dlh2001-at-comcast.net>]

On Thursday 30 May 2002 02:02 pm, William Scalione wrote:
> Hey Ray, or anyone else
>
> Do you know how to access a fat32 file system from
> linux on a dual boot machine? 
> Also I have a PCMCIA
> ata memory card that I would also like to access from
> Linux. If I go to the hardware info icon it shows up as
> hde1 but there is nothing under the mnt directory for
> either that or the FAT32 file system.
>
> Bill


Yes, I am running a dual boot machine and it just so happens 
to have a PCMCIA reader installed.  Aren't you lucky?

Here's how to see your Windows drive from within Linux:
As root create a directory under /mnt called /oldwin.

Then run:
mount -t vfat -o rw,uid=username,gid=groupname /dev/hdb1 /mnt/oldwin

I put this statement in my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file so that it happens on 
every boot.   Make sure you set "username" & "groupname" to whoever
you log into linux as, otherwise everything will be root restricted on the
Windows' drive.   Note that in my case the Window's partition resides
on a second slave drive.  Your milage may vary depending on where
your Windows partition resides.

Now onto PCMCIA, you are really lucky on this one because I've happen to have 
been involved in PCMCIA professionally for the past 7 years in both embedded
and desktop OS's. As I write this I am looking back on it all and I'm 
thinking it's pretty scary how much I've been involved with it.  You know 
things like watching a company called "Sundisk" turn into a company called
"Sandisk" and then watch it become one of the biggest players in the market.
Shoulda bought that stock!  Oh well.. onto your problem...

You should check up on the PCMCIA HOWTO located at www.linuxdoc.org,
but experience tells me I can get you going with the following.  This assumes 
that you actually have the pcmcia stuff loading. That is to say, you actually 
see "starting pcmcia"  in the boot up messages of your linux install and that 
you hear the "happy beep" when you install the card, but you just can't 
access it.

As root create a directory under /mnt/ called /pccard.

As root, Edit the /etc/pcmcia/ide.opts file as follows:

case "$ADDRESS" in
*,*,*,1)
    INFO="Sample IDE setup"
    DO_FSTAB="y" ; DO_FSCK="y" ; DO_MOUNT="y"
    FSTYPE="msdos" ; FSTYPE="vfat"
    OPTS=""
    MOUNTPT="/mnt/pccard"
    ;;
*,*,*)
    PARTS="1"
    # Card eject policy options
    NO_CHECK=n
    NO_FUSER=n
    ;;
esac


Save the file and reboot the machine ( or restart pcmcia if you know how to).
You should then be able to insert the card and see it in the mnt/pccard dir.

BTW,  note that FSTYPE="msdos" ; FSTYPE="vfat" indicated so that you can read
ATA cards that also have MSDOS type of partitions.  Why do we need that?
Well, some embedded  devices (i.e, digital cameras) don't use FAT32.  Instead 
they are running some embedded variant of an MSDOS partition.  You should not
format or fdisk a FLASH ATA card on Windows' machines.  Instead, format them 
on the actual embedded device (where possible).