From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 5 23:31:27 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2095416A4D2 for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 23:31:27 +0000 (GMT) Received: from cyclone.mail.adnap.net.au (cyclone.mail.adnap.net.au [203.6.132.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99E9D43D3F for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2005 23:31:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from bastill@adam.com.au) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (202-6-151-45.ip.adam.com.au [202.6.151.45]) by cyclone.mail.adnap.net.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD84D98EB9; Thu, 6 Jan 2005 10:05:16 +1030 (CST) From: Brian Astill To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 10:01:39 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2 References: <003501c4e842$2f46c830$2a64015a@apise6e37e23bb> <200412241641.47130.bastill@adam.com.au> <41CBF748.3010407@infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <41CBF748.3010407@infracaninophile.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Message-Id: <200501061001.39979.bastill@adam.com.au> Subject: Re: Explore FreeBSD filesystem under Windows? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 23:31:27 -0000 On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 06:02 am, Matthew Seaman wrote: > > So ... if your flavour of Windoze can read FAT32, a FAT32 partition > > is a very good idea because all the commonly-available unices can > > read it as well. > > If it can't ...  the options aren't so good.  I'd think ext2 would > > be the only workable alternative to FAT16, but neither is > > desirable. > > > > BTW, I haven't found one, but does anyone have a way to make WinNT > > read FAT32? Found that myself: www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml Which allowed me to download "fat32.exe" which allows NT to read/write but not create or format FAT32 partitions. Works OK. > You know, every time I think I'm becoming too cynical about the > Windows world, all I need to do is read a post like this, and remind > myself that it is impossible to be /too/ cynical about Windows. It gets worse. I did some googling about VFAT and unices and found that it is a "feature" of VFAT that all files/directories are seen by unices as root-only access AND that this is immutable in situ. drwxr--r-- 25 root root 16384 Dec 31 1969 hdb5 drwxr--r-- 9 root root 16384 Jul 23 23:28 FreeBSD-docs -rwxr--r-- 1 root root 71142 Jul 23 23:28 install-FreeBSD-notes I CAN copy a file (as root) to my personal home directory and (as root) chown and chmod there. I can then deal with the file as I wish. However, saving to the VFAT directory can only be done as root and the permissions then revert to " -rwxr--r- root root". Not nice. So it looks as though ext2 (using explore2fs from Windoze) is the only alternative to fat16. -- Regards, Brian sos-sa.org.au