RE: freedos can't be mounted by linux?

Hi, I never experienced problems with mounting DOS partitions of
any kind from Linux (NTFS/NTFS5 of WinNT/2000/XP could, however,
be reluctant to mounting from older Linux versions), maybe you
specified the wrong filesystem type:
DOS/Win95/Win98/... partitions must be mounted as msdos/vfat/umsdos
partition type. Recommended is vfat. MS DOS is with short filenames
only and UMSDOS is with special helper files to allow everything
that Linux filesystems allow, like hardlinks and symlinks, to be
simulated. However, umsdos looks quite ugly when viewed from DOS.
To make use of long file names, use LFNDOS or DOSLFN or similar
tools for DOS, see the links page of www.freedos.org; If you do not
do so, I still would recommend using vfat: Short filenames will
still look nice, and long filenames will look like longfi~1.txt as
known from Dos/Windows for FreeDOS without a LFN driver.

Definitely wrong would be to select ext2 or some Linux-only
filesystem type while mounting a FreeDOS partition: While FreeDOS
can be made to access Linux partitions with special tools (as Windows
can), a normal DOS partition is a very different thing from a Linux
partition, so no wonder that Linux complains when you tell it that a
DOS partition would be of type ext2.

> When I try to mount my FreeDOS partition in Linux (Red Hat 7.3), mount
> returns "bad superblock". Is it a known problem that FreeDOS partitions
> can't be mounted by Linux mount? Please help.

Modern Linux distributions like recent Mandrake/SuSE/RedHat often come
with configuration wizards to detect Dos/Windows partitions and add them
to the permanent configuration, but in case you want to work by hand:

Either, for permanent configuration (will be activated at boot time, but
you do not need to reboot - just type "mount /dev/hda99" after editing):
Insert a line in your /etc/fstab with content like:
/dev/hda99 /directory-where-the-partition-should-show-up vfat defaults,auto

Or, for one time mounting, enter something like:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda99 /directory-where-the-partition-should-show-up

Of course hda99 is just an example: Select the partition that you want,
you can get a listing by using "cat /proc/partition" or "fdisk -l", the
latter being for root only. Usually, editing fstab and using mount are
also allowed for root only. For floppy disks, better use the so-called
mtools (mdir, mcopy, ...), because if you remove a floppy before umount -ing
it, not all data may have been written, so your floppy is left in an
incomplete state. If you want to give it a try anyway, I am using autofs:
When I access the directory where the floppy gets mounted, the autofs
automounter automatically mounts the floppy. And a few seconds after the
last use, the floppy automatically gets umounted.

For nice and easy access of your Dos partitions, you can specify things like
/dev/hda99 /where vfat rw,auto,uid=500,gid=100,umask=027
in fstab or use mount like:
mount -t vfat -o uid=500,gid=100,umask=027 /dev/hda99 /where
which will cause all files on the Dos partition to show up as owned by user
number 500 and belonging to group number 100, with full access for the user,
read access for the group and no access for other people. Use ro instead of
rw if you want to mount the partition readonly.

I hope this "Dos partitions used from Linux HOWTO" was of sufficient general
interest to forgive me a CC: to fd-dev... And do not forget: With a modern
Linux, you can leave most of these details to some Wizards that you can use
with the mouse, but lowlevel configuration on the command line with a text
editor works everywhere.

Eric

PS: Wine, the Windows emulation window for Linux, comes with a configuration
wizard that detects Windows installations and Dos partitions automatically.
At least the free version of www.codeweavers.com does, and I guess others do
so as well. For super-realistic Windows emulation, you can buy a professional
Wine version from codeweavers (but free Wine is good enough for most things).
This is interesting for FreeDOS/Linux dual-booters like me, because as we
know, Windows is no free software and Windows 3 does not work with FreeDOS.