Can't mount vfat filesystem

[The Cageybee]

Well, a week is a long time in hacking.

I decided to dump Openwrt and flashed slackware. So glad I did. It
seems a lot easier to get things installed and running with slackware.

So, I've setup, and more importantly, got working:
Samba shares (NAS)
Apache, MySQL, PHP
BitTornado + TorrentFlux
NTFS reads/writes
CUPS (not got printer installed yet)
And load of other stuff, so much, that I forgotten lots.

But, I'm having a problem getting USB sticks with a FAT fs to mount.
Whenever I try I get:
'mount: unknown filesystem type 'vfat''

I've been having a look around but can't figure out how to get it to
work. From what I can tell, vfat should be part of the kernel, so not
sure what to do.

Do I need a package to read/write/mount a fat partition? If so, which
one? Or will I have to build them from source? Again, if so, what?

I installed 'dosfstools-2.11-i486-1.txz', but, obviously, it didn't
help, as that's more extended tools for working with fat systems
rather than the actual drivers.

I'm just hoping I don't have to build a whole kernel/distro :(

Aside from that, I can't tell you how pleased I am with the BB. Who
knew linux could be so much fun?

Regards
The Cageybee

[biff...@yahoo.co.uk]

The Slackware kernel was made so it would fit on 1MB flash boards, so
it misses out some things, and because it differs from the stock
slackware one I had to compile a custom kernel for the Bifferboard
distribution. Because I was lazy I didn't compile all the modules you
could ever need. You can compile a kernel+modules on the Bifferboard,
but it takes a long time. The alternative (the way I do it) is to
install that root tarball inside a virtual machine using VirtualBox
(or something else) and then run the kernel compilation in that. It
may also be possible to do something chroot on a Linux machine. When
you do the compile, it doesn't really matter what kernel you're
running, it's the headers on the disk that need to be right.

Of course, maybe another Slackware user will have that module, and can
simply post it :).

cheers,
Biff.

On Nov 28, 12:20 am, The Cageybee <dariuspwilkin...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[The Cageybee]

Sounds like a lot of hasle. I'll just go with ext3 for all my drives I
think.
I've got samba setup and working, so if I really need to get something
to/from a stick, I'll do it through that.

Thanks for the info though, saved me a lot of time persuing a fools
errand.

The Cageybee