On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Tom Diehl wrote: >> Unfortunately, VFAT is part of Linux, NOT Windows >> 2000. Therefore, other than using FAT or FAT32, NTFS > >HUH?? A VFAT file system is a windoze filesystem. Linux is just >smart enough to read it. IIRC VFAT=FAT32. Technically speaking, the filesystem is FAT, and there are different variants of FAT. FAT12, FAT16, FAT32. The original FAT filesystems have a limitation of 8.3 character filenames built into the filesystem by design. This is where VFAT comes into play. VFAT is not itself a filesystem, but rather a backwards compatible but new interpretation of the directory layout on any FAT based filesystem. VFAT changes the way directory entries stored on disk are interpreted, by taking multiple directory entries and grouping them together in a very very evil hacked up way. For the extreme gory details of VFAT directory structure, there is a document on VFAT in the Linux kernel source code which details everything. So, when you mount a filesystem in Linux as "msdos" or as "vfat", you're mounting an FAT filesystem, either FAT12, FAT16, or FAT32. Choosing "msdos" as the type, tells the filesystem driver to interpret the directory contents as traditional 8.3 FAT directory structure, whereas mounting as type "vfat" tells the driver to interpret the directory structure with VFAT semantics. VFAT works with all FAT filesystems, including FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32. It's important thus to recognize that VFAT and FAT32 are totally different things, however people often get them confused as meaning the same thing, probably because they were introduced in Microsoft Windows at roughly the same time. Actually, when the original Windows 95 came out, it used VFAT directory interpretation for FAT12 and FAT16, but it did not even support FAT32 yet, which didn't exist until Windows 95b was released. Just thought I would clarify the incorrect misconception that VFAT==FAT32, as it does not. Just for fun, format an MSDOS floppy disk (FAT12) and mount it as VFAT. ;o) Hope this helps. TTYL -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc.
