Package: kernel-source-2.6.8 Version: 2.6.8-16 Severity: normal We're the IT support group for our mathematical institute and we're having trouble with some USB-sticks. The vfat module is not able to mount some of them because the media descriptor byte is 0xB9 instead of being between F0 and FF as the module wants it to be. The USB sticks are preformatted (by toshiba in this case) and they work under openBSD, netBSD, windows and MAC, only the linux kernel complains here. Just reformat is not always an option if you have data on it and you don't want to loose it. (We have a quite mixed userbase here with a lot of windows users)
We did some research on MSDN and discovered that the definition of the media descriptor is not that well formulated. On the link below they say that these values are the valid ones (F0-FF) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;75131 And here they say that the list shows *some* valid values http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;140418 In <kernel-source>/fs/fat/inode.c the media descriptor is only used to verify the partition type. As we have seen above this may not be correct to be that picky there. A possible solution could be to "soften" the check in /usr/include/linux/msdos_fs.h for FAT_VALID_MEDIA(x) which currently looks like this: #define FAT_VALID_MEDIA(x) ((0xF8 <= (x) && (x) <= 0xFF) || (x) == 0xF0) IMHO this bug should be forwarded to upstream for further discussions, because I think that toshiba sells a lot of "broken" USB-sticks and this should be handled. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-686 Locale: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (charmap=ISO-8859-15) Versions of packages kernel-source-2.6.8 depends on: ii binutils 2.15-6 The GNU assembler, linker and bina ii bzip2 1.0.2-7 high-quality block-sorting file co ii coreutils [fileutils] 5.2.1-2 The GNU core utilities -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]