Ryan Little wrote:

>On Thu, 2002-08-15 at 09:00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>- When formatting a loopback filesystem greater than 2GB in size on a
>>  vfat partition, DrakX crashes every time. This problem existed in
>>  8.2 as well -- it would be nice to prohibit this if vfat can't
>>  handle it.
>>    
>>
>This is a know limitation of the FAT filesytem as old as DOS. If you
>think about it, a loop filesystem is nothing more than a single file on
>the parent filesystem. FAT has (and has always had) a single file limit
>of 2GB. I do agree that it would be nice to have some hack to DrakX that
>would warn you about it...but I think it would be tough to do (maybe at
>least popping up a warning about loop filesystems over 2GB on VFAT would
>be nice?) 
>
That's kind of what I was expecting. All I'm asking is to prevent me 
from shooting myself in the foot, if that's really the limit. If that's 
not really the limit and there's a bug in some of the software involved 
in trying to make the loop fs, then it should be fixed... but I'm 
guessing, as you are, that it's FAT's fault.

>>- I am unable to write on a vfat partition from which my root
>>  partition was mounted via -o loop.
>>    
>>
>Why in heavens name would you want to mount your root partition to a
>vfat partition? This is probably a Good Thing (TM). As writing to it on
>a VFAT filesystem would cause you to loose all the file permissions.
>  
>
I don't quite understand the question. My root partition is formatted 
ext3 (usually I use reiserfs or xfs) and it's inside a loop file which 
lives on a vfat partition. Is that bad? I was just trying to use some 
space on my Windows drive so I could try the beta without nuking my 8.2 
install... that would make my wife unhappy.  (My 5-year-old, on the 
other hand, is happy to be a beta tester.)

But when the root ext3 partition is mounted from a loop file inside a 
vfat partition, non-root users can't create files on the vfat partition 
outside of the loop file.

Have fun,

-- 
Aaron Peromsik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----[For thinner oatmeal, add more water.] 
| Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
----------------------------------------[For thicker oatmeal, add less water.]




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