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Topic: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

is there a web site for dosfstools?  I could not find it on google.
more importantly, is there a contact for dosfstools?

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Excuse me but i dont understand what you need / ask ?

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

the dosfstools part/library of gparted: is there a web page or a contact?

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

GParted doesnt play itself with dostools. I added mtools to livecd so users can set partition name to fat, but there is nothing else than :

Mtools added and some basic updates. It is now possible to set label on "fat" file system.
ATM only  by hand ; will be enable in GParted, asap.
You need to edit /etc/mtools/mtools.conf (using mc), make the changes you need/want, save and quit, then run the following in a terminal:

    mlabel  X:new_label

where X is the letter you have set to the right /dev/device.
Then your FAT partition is labeled.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

oh. dosfstools was mentioned on the gparted web site under "features".
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php
The FreeDOS project was looking to find a contact person/web site where they could get this library.  This is why I was asking.
it sounds like you are just using utilities that came with the OS build which may have been built(?) on dosfstools if I am getting this correct.

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Really sorry, but i definitely don't understand what you ask/need :-/

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

never mind.  I don't know any other way to put it in english "website for dosfstools".  no big deal anyway.

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

I don't know how to put [SOLVED] in the subject.  I can't see anything anywhere for that on this site.

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Just edit the *first* post of your topic, and then you can change the title.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

@LarryT, you said that gparted does not use dosfstools, however it really does! I am also searching for an update for the dosfstools, because there is a critical bug in the version used by gparted! If I start gparted then gparted start dosfsck to check my FAT32 partition, however on this partition are disk images located from Acronis, which are all 4Gb in size. The dosfsck doesn't like this, and truncates these files to 0, and the CPU goes to 100% forever until you kill the dosfsck. After this all acronis images are corrupt on the FAT32 partition. Therefore, I need  an update for the dosfstools, or an command line option for gparted to disable the dosfsck. I am using geparted 0.3.3 on fedora 7. (Before you say: "try 0.3.5", I am unable to build a working 0.3.5 version).

11 (edited by gedakc 2008-03-24 20:57:25)

Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Dosfstools includes the commands mkdosfs (mkfs.dos) and dosfsck (fsck.msdos).  The command mkdosfs is used to create a new FAT16 or FAT32 file system, and dosfsck is used to check and correct errors in FAT16 or FAT32 file systems.

Dosfstools is used by many GNU/Linux distributions (including the currently unsupported GParted LiveCD), and by the GParted program.

Many GNU/Linux distributions use the dosfsck command on boot up to ensure that all FAT file systems are healthy.

The GParted program uses the dosfsck command only after operations such as Move/Resize have been chosen for a FAT file system, and Apply operations has been selected.  For instance, dosfsck is used prior to operations (e.g., move/resize) on FAT file systems, and also after the operation to ensure that the FAT file system is healthy.  If no operations are selected on FAT file systems, then the GParted program does _not_ run dosfsck.

From a quick search on Google, it would appear that there is no obvious maintainer for dosfstools.  Some GNU/Linux distribution distributions, such as Ubuntu, appear to be maintaining their own patches for dosfstools.

For instance, the problem discussed by PeterK under this topic appears to have been reported to the Ubuntu team.  See:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … +bug/62831

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Thanks gedakc, I have searched in the unbuntu website and found a patch which solves this bug. I have used the ubuntu sources and ubuntu patch on my Fedora 7 system, and it actually works now. My Acronis disk images on the FAT32 partition are now left alone, NO more truncating to 0.

The sources and patch can be found at:

website:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/do … 2.1ubuntu3

sources:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+so … rig.tar.gz
patch:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+so … u3.diff.gz

It was an overflow problem: 65535 * 65535 = 0 if "long" values are used. The patch changes the "long" values to "long long" which are at least 64 bits in size, as opposed to 32 bits for "long" values.

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

Thank you for the above details PeterK.  I am glad to hear that dosfsck is working better for you now.

This problem was also tracked as GParted bug #340320.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=340320

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Re: dosfstools - who to contact? website?

I have reported this bug also to the fedora bug tracker.

Thats why I like open-source software so much, if there is a problem it can be fixed with some effort and help from others. With closed software you are in deep trouble if there is a problem.

Until recently I used "partition magic", until I came across a harddisk which causes "partition magic" to crash because of a partition error. I was unable to resolve the error with "partition magic". So I was in desperate need of an other tool, and I found gparted. With gparted I was able to correct the error.

Only one thing to say. It took me some time to figure out why I got: "Unable to read the contents of this filesystem. Because of this some operations may be unavailable". Looking at the "show features" window, shows for all filesystems: red crosses. The reason for this was that on fedora the /sbin and the /usr/sbin are not in the search path, and therefore the filesystem tools can not be found. To resolve this I needed first execute the following command:

export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin

After this gparted works OK.