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From: scott@statsci.com (Scott Blachowicz)
Subject: Re: msdosfs causes total meltdown
In-Reply-To: j@uriah.heep.sax.de's message of 14 Oct 1995 20:39:59 +0100
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Organization: StatSci div. of MathSoft, Seattle, WA USA
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References: <45ktg5$er0@ionews.io.org> <45p3mf$c84@uriah.heep.sax.de>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 16:58:49 GMT
>>>>> "J" == J Wunsch <j@uriah.heep.sax.de>
J> Unfortunately, msdosfs is known to be broken.
J> Did you try mounting it read/only? This should prevent it from
J> tampering with the BSD file systems.
If only that were true...
That's one of the things I tried on my 2.0.5R system at home. Since then
I've seen mentions that seem to indicate that the messages like this:
mountmsdosfs(): root directory is not multiple of clustersize length
when the partition is mounted might indicate trouble. I was getting those
messages. Also, in fiddling with the mtools-2.0.7 code (the Debian/Linux
version, at least - I'm working on a patch for the ports collection to
incorporate their external configuration file code, so you don't have to
recompile the source code just to add a new drive specification), I notice
a check in there to see if the FAT is "right"...
#ifdef CHK_FAT
fat_size = (fat_bits == 12) ? (num_clus +2) * 3 / 2 :
(num_clus +2) * 2;
fat_size = (fat_size / 512) + ((fat_size % 512) ? 1 : 0);
if (fat_size != fat_len) {
fprintf(stderr, "fat_read: Wrong FAT encoding?\n");
exit(1);
}
#endif /* CHK_FAT */
I know my C: drive fails that test and I have a feeling that maybe it's a
side effect of using FIPS to shrink the partition down. And I have this
vague bit of intuition that it is somehow related to the problems I had
when I mounted the DOS slices. I haven't had the time or energy to
re-slice & re-install my disk to verify that guess. I just stopped
mounting my DOS slices from FreeBSD and everything's been hunky dory.
--
Scott Blachowicz Ph: 206/283-8802x240 StatSci, a div of MathSoft, Inc.
1700 Westlake Ave N #500
scott@statsci.com Seattle, WA USA 98109
Scott.Blachowicz@seaslug.org