Based on kernel version 3.9. Page generated on 2013-05-02 23:06 EST.
1 USING VFAT 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 To use the vfat filesystem, use the filesystem type 'vfat'. i.e. 4 mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt 5 6 No special partition formatter is required. mkdosfs will work fine 7 if you want to format from within Linux. 8 9 VFAT MOUNT OPTIONS 10 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 uid=### -- Set the owner of all files on this filesystem. 12 The default is the uid of current process. 13 14 gid=### -- Set the group of all files on this filesystem. 15 The default is the gid of current process. 16 17 umask=### -- The permission mask (for files and directories, see umask(1)). 18 The default is the umask of current process. 19 20 dmask=### -- The permission mask for the directory. 21 The default is the umask of current process. 22 23 fmask=### -- The permission mask for files. 24 The default is the umask of current process. 25 26 allow_utime=### -- This option controls the permission check of mtime/atime. 27 28 20 - If current process is in group of file's group ID, 29 you can change timestamp. 30 2 - Other users can change timestamp. 31 32 The default is set from `dmask' option. (If the directory is 33 writable, utime(2) is also allowed. I.e. ~dmask & 022) 34 35 Normally utime(2) checks current process is owner of 36 the file, or it has CAP_FOWNER capability. But FAT 37 filesystem doesn't have uid/gid on disk, so normal 38 check is too unflexible. With this option you can 39 relax it. 40 41 codepage=### -- Sets the codepage number for converting to shortname 42 characters on FAT filesystem. 43 By default, FAT_DEFAULT_CODEPAGE setting is used. 44 45 iocharset=<name> -- Character set to use for converting between the 46 encoding is used for user visible filename and 16 bit 47 Unicode characters. Long filenames are stored on disk 48 in Unicode format, but Unix for the most part doesn't 49 know how to deal with Unicode. 50 By default, FAT_DEFAULT_IOCHARSET setting is used. 51 52 There is also an option of doing UTF-8 translations 53 with the utf8 option. 54 55 NOTE: "iocharset=utf8" is not recommended. If unsure, 56 you should consider the following option instead. 57 58 utf8=<bool> -- UTF-8 is the filesystem safe version of Unicode that 59 is used by the console. It can be enabled for the 60 filesystem with this option. If 'uni_xlate' gets set, 61 UTF-8 gets disabled. 62 63 uni_xlate=<bool> -- Translate unhandled Unicode characters to special 64 escaped sequences. This would let you backup and 65 restore filenames that are created with any Unicode 66 characters. Until Linux supports Unicode for real, 67 this gives you an alternative. Without this option, 68 a '?' is used when no translation is possible. The 69 escape character is ':' because it is otherwise 70 illegal on the vfat filesystem. The escape sequence 71 that gets used is ':' and the four digits of hexadecimal 72 unicode. 73 74 nonumtail=<bool> -- When creating 8.3 aliases, normally the alias will 75 end in '~1' or tilde followed by some number. If this 76 option is set, then if the filename is 77 "longfilename.txt" and "longfile.txt" does not 78 currently exist in the directory, 'longfile.txt' will 79 be the short alias instead of 'longfi~1.txt'. 80 81 usefree -- Use the "free clusters" value stored on FSINFO. It'll 82 be used to determine number of free clusters without 83 scanning disk. But it's not used by default, because 84 recent Windows don't update it correctly in some 85 case. If you are sure the "free clusters" on FSINFO is 86 correct, by this option you can avoid scanning disk. 87 88 quiet -- Stops printing certain warning messages. 89 90 check=s|r|n -- Case sensitivity checking setting. 91 s: strict, case sensitive 92 r: relaxed, case insensitive 93 n: normal, default setting, currently case insensitive 94 95 nocase -- This was deprecated for vfat. Use shortname=win95 instead. 96 97 shortname=lower|win95|winnt|mixed 98 -- Shortname display/create setting. 99 lower: convert to lowercase for display, 100 emulate the Windows 95 rule for create. 101 win95: emulate the Windows 95 rule for display/create. 102 winnt: emulate the Windows NT rule for display/create. 103 mixed: emulate the Windows NT rule for display, 104 emulate the Windows 95 rule for create. 105 Default setting is `mixed'. 106 107 tz=UTC -- Interpret timestamps as UTC rather than local time. 108 This option disables the conversion of timestamps 109 between local time (as used by Windows on FAT) and UTC 110 (which Linux uses internally). This is particularly 111 useful when mounting devices (like digital cameras) 112 that are set to UTC in order to avoid the pitfalls of 113 local time. 114 time_offset=minutes 115 -- Set offset for conversion of timestamps from local time 116 used by FAT to UTC. I.e. <minutes> minutes will be subtracted 117 from each timestamp to convert it to UTC used internally by 118 Linux. This is useful when time zone set in sys_tz is 119 not the time zone used by the filesystem. Note that this 120 option still does not provide correct time stamps in all 121 cases in presence of DST - time stamps in a different DST 122 setting will be off by one hour. 123 124 showexec -- If set, the execute permission bits of the file will be 125 allowed only if the extension part of the name is .EXE, 126 .COM, or .BAT. Not set by default. 127 128 debug -- Can be set, but unused by the current implementation. 129 130 sys_immutable -- If set, ATTR_SYS attribute on FAT is handled as 131 IMMUTABLE flag on Linux. Not set by default. 132 133 flush -- If set, the filesystem will try to flush to disk more 134 early than normal. Not set by default. 135 136 rodir -- FAT has the ATTR_RO (read-only) attribute. On Windows, 137 the ATTR_RO of the directory will just be ignored, 138 and is used only by applications as a flag (e.g. it's set 139 for the customized folder). 140 141 If you want to use ATTR_RO as read-only flag even for 142 the directory, set this option. 143 144 errors=panic|continue|remount-ro 145 -- specify FAT behavior on critical errors: panic, continue 146 without doing anything or remount the partition in 147 read-only mode (default behavior). 148 149 discard -- If set, issues discard/TRIM commands to the block 150 device when blocks are freed. This is useful for SSD devices 151 and sparse/thinly-provisoned LUNs. 152 153 nfs -- This option maintains an index (cache) of directory 154 inodes by i_logstart which is used by the nfs-related code to 155 improve look-ups. 156 157 Enable this only if you want to export the FAT filesystem 158 over NFS 159 160 <bool>: 0,1,yes,no,true,false 161 162 TODO 163 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 164 * Need to get rid of the raw scanning stuff. Instead, always use 165 a get next directory entry approach. The only thing left that uses 166 raw scanning is the directory renaming code. 167 168 169 POSSIBLE PROBLEMS 170 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 171 * vfat_valid_longname does not properly checked reserved names. 172 * When a volume name is the same as a directory name in the root 173 directory of the filesystem, the directory name sometimes shows 174 up as an empty file. 175 * autoconv option does not work correctly. 176 177 BUG REPORTS 178 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 179 If you have trouble with the VFAT filesystem, mail bug reports to 180 chaffee@bmrc.cs.berkeley.edu. Please specify the filename 181 and the operation that gave you trouble. 182 183 TEST SUITE 184 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 185 If you plan to make any modifications to the vfat filesystem, please 186 get the test suite that comes with the vfat distribution at 187 188 http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/ 189 people/chaffee/vfat.html 190 191 This tests quite a few parts of the vfat filesystem and additional 192 tests for new features or untested features would be appreciated. 193 194 NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE VFAT FILESYSTEM 195 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 196 (This documentation was provided by Galen C. Hunt <gchunt@cs.rochester.edu> 197 and lightly annotated by Gordon Chaffee). 198 199 This document presents a very rough, technical overview of my 200 knowledge of the extended FAT file system used in Windows NT 3.5 and 201 Windows 95. I don't guarantee that any of the following is correct, 202 but it appears to be so. 203 204 The extended FAT file system is almost identical to the FAT 205 file system used in DOS versions up to and including 6.223410239847 206 :-). The significant change has been the addition of long file names. 207 These names support up to 255 characters including spaces and lower 208 case characters as opposed to the traditional 8.3 short names. 209 210 Here is the description of the traditional FAT entry in the current 211 Windows 95 filesystem: 212 213 struct directory { // Short 8.3 names 214 unsigned char name[8]; // file name 215 unsigned char ext[3]; // file extension 216 unsigned char attr; // attribute byte 217 unsigned char lcase; // Case for base and extension 218 unsigned char ctime_ms; // Creation time, milliseconds 219 unsigned char ctime[2]; // Creation time 220 unsigned char cdate[2]; // Creation date 221 unsigned char adate[2]; // Last access date 222 unsigned char reserved[2]; // reserved values (ignored) 223 unsigned char time[2]; // time stamp 224 unsigned char date[2]; // date stamp 225 unsigned char start[2]; // starting cluster number 226 unsigned char size[4]; // size of the file 227 }; 228 229 The lcase field specifies if the base and/or the extension of an 8.3 230 name should be capitalized. This field does not seem to be used by 231 Windows 95 but it is used by Windows NT. The case of filenames is not 232 completely compatible from Windows NT to Windows 95. It is not completely 233 compatible in the reverse direction, however. Filenames that fit in 234 the 8.3 namespace and are written on Windows NT to be lowercase will 235 show up as uppercase on Windows 95. 236 237 Note that the "start" and "size" values are actually little 238 endian integer values. The descriptions of the fields in this 239 structure are public knowledge and can be found elsewhere. 240 241 With the extended FAT system, Microsoft has inserted extra 242 directory entries for any files with extended names. (Any name which 243 legally fits within the old 8.3 encoding scheme does not have extra 244 entries.) I call these extra entries slots. Basically, a slot is a 245 specially formatted directory entry which holds up to 13 characters of 246 a file's extended name. Think of slots as additional labeling for the 247 directory entry of the file to which they correspond. Microsoft 248 prefers to refer to the 8.3 entry for a file as its alias and the 249 extended slot directory entries as the file name. 250 251 The C structure for a slot directory entry follows: 252 253 struct slot { // Up to 13 characters of a long name 254 unsigned char id; // sequence number for slot 255 unsigned char name0_4[10]; // first 5 characters in name 256 unsigned char attr; // attribute byte 257 unsigned char reserved; // always 0 258 unsigned char alias_checksum; // checksum for 8.3 alias 259 unsigned char name5_10[12]; // 6 more characters in name 260 unsigned char start[2]; // starting cluster number 261 unsigned char name11_12[4]; // last 2 characters in name 262 }; 263 264 If the layout of the slots looks a little odd, it's only 265 because of Microsoft's efforts to maintain compatibility with old 266 software. The slots must be disguised to prevent old software from 267 panicking. To this end, a number of measures are taken: 268 269 1) The attribute byte for a slot directory entry is always set 270 to 0x0f. This corresponds to an old directory entry with 271 attributes of "hidden", "system", "read-only", and "volume 272 label". Most old software will ignore any directory 273 entries with the "volume label" bit set. Real volume label 274 entries don't have the other three bits set. 275 276 2) The starting cluster is always set to 0, an impossible 277 value for a DOS file. 278 279 Because the extended FAT system is backward compatible, it is 280 possible for old software to modify directory entries. Measures must 281 be taken to ensure the validity of slots. An extended FAT system can 282 verify that a slot does in fact belong to an 8.3 directory entry by 283 the following: 284 285 1) Positioning. Slots for a file always immediately proceed 286 their corresponding 8.3 directory entry. In addition, each 287 slot has an id which marks its order in the extended file 288 name. Here is a very abbreviated view of an 8.3 directory 289 entry and its corresponding long name slots for the file 290 "My Big File.Extension which is long": 291 292 <proceeding files...> 293 <slot #3, id = 0x43, characters = "h is long"> 294 <slot #2, id = 0x02, characters = "xtension whic"> 295 <slot #1, id = 0x01, characters = "My Big File.E"> 296 <directory entry, name = "MYBIGFIL.EXT"> 297 298 Note that the slots are stored from last to first. Slots 299 are numbered from 1 to N. The Nth slot is or'ed with 0x40 300 to mark it as the last one. 301 302 2) Checksum. Each slot has an "alias_checksum" value. The 303 checksum is calculated from the 8.3 name using the 304 following algorithm: 305 306 for (sum = i = 0; i < 11; i++) { 307 sum = (((sum&1)<<7)|((sum&0xfe)>>1)) + name[i] 308 } 309 310 3) If there is free space in the final slot, a Unicode NULL (0x0000) 311 is stored after the final character. After that, all unused 312 characters in the final slot are set to Unicode 0xFFFF. 313 314 Finally, note that the extended name is stored in Unicode. Each Unicode 315 character takes two bytes.