bug#418: FAT32 FS's being modified???

[email protected] writes:

> Package: lnx-bbc
> Version: http://www.lnx-bbc.org/images/bbc-2.1.iso
>   ((Severity: Makes it unusable for my purpose.))
> 
> Summary:
> LNX-BBC seems to modify about 6 bytes on Windows 98 FAT32 filesystems
> it mounts. This seems to be the reason their free lists are screwed up
> when I boot Windows 98SE on them after working with them in LNX-BBC.
> I am unable to locate any mention of this in existing bug reports.
> 
> Details:
> I have been using LNX-BBC to get to the dd command to make 
> image snapshot backup copies of whole filesystems from my Windows 98SE
> computer. Source disk is a 4 gigabyte SCSI drive with a full-sized FAT32 FS,
> and the destination disk might be a Western Digital IDE 120 Gigabyte drive.
> 
> That was working fairly well, I thought. Until I ran "cmp -l" to verify that 
> the two
> copies were identical, as I hoped.  Just after running a 4 gigabyte dd, the two
> copies are indeed identical.  If I then shutdown and reboot LNX-BBC, and run the
> "cmp -l" again, they are no longer identical.  6 bytes are different, about 
> 1000 bytes
> into the partition. On a different try with 30gig souce/2 partitions  to 120gig 
> destination,
> only the first partition is messed up.

This is very troubling, and I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

LNX-BBC has a "prompt" option designed to allow you to decide which
command are run during the boot process.  Would you mind experimenting
with that to see whether the filesystems are still modified if they
are not mounted?

You should be able to type "1 prompt" at the initial boot prompt, and
then receive a series of yes or no questions which should include a
question about mount.local (to which you should say "no" to avoid
having the local filesystems automounted).  I would like to know
whether this makes a difference and prevents the mysterious filesystem
modifications from taking place.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <[email protected]> | Very frankly, I am opposed to people
     http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/   | being programmed by others.
     http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/     |     -- Fred Rogers (1928-2003),
                                       |        464 U.S. 417, 445 (1984)