[Sussex] Mounting floppy with vfat

[steve at dobson.org]

Gavin

On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 11:58:23PM -0000, Gavin Stevens wrote:
> I need to be able to mount my FD with vfat so that I can save a spreadsheet 
> & my partner can then load it onto a Window$ machine.
> 
> My /etc/fstab currently looks pretty standard & makes no mention of vfat at 
> all. Attempts to mount the FD with vfat resulted in me being barked at for 
> various reasons, including the fact that vfat isn't mentioned in fstab.
> 
> Obviously I need to add vfat as an option in fstab, but I'm in complete 
> dunce mode as to where any reference to vfat should go (presumably on the 
> line relating to /floppy?).
> 
> Will there be any other changes I need to make in order to achieve this?
> 
> I'm using Debian 2.2r4.
> 
> Any help appreciated,

I think you need to load the vfat kernel module.

Do the following:
   # lsmod
and look for the vfat [& fat] modules.

If you don't see any then use the command
  # modprobe vfat
which will load vfat and any modules that it requires.

I assume that your fstab looks something like this:
  /dev/fd0 /floppy auto user,noauto 0 0

If you want to automatically load the [v]fat modules at boot time then
edit the /etc/modules and add a line with the text "vfat" on it.

Let us know how you got on.

Steve