vfat lv sharing

[Weiner, Michael]

I have a machine with 2 disks in it, one runs winXP, the other Fedora. I
want to take a logical volume from the linux side that is currently
formatted as vfat (FAT32) and be able to see it on the windows side. The
linux side is LVM, and I am having issues seeing the lv on the windows
side. Is this possible? Has any one done this before? And can anyone
share any tips to help make this work?

Thanks in advance
Michael 


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[Msquared]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 11:17:41AM +1030, Tim wrote:

>  You can format a partition as VFAT *or* LVM, it can't be both at
> the
>  same time. 
I think Michael has a logical volume in the volume group, and that logical
volume is VFAT.

Michael: if you want Windows to see that logical volume, I don't think
this is possible.  If I were setting up a dual-boot system where I needed
to share information, I'd set it up with partitions like so:

  1: /boot (ext3; 100MB)
  2: C: (FAT; for Windows)
  3: D: (FAT; for shared space)
  4: volume group (for Linux installation)

Also, be aware that Windows will see the Linux volume group as a drive
that it thinks it can do stuff with, so you might want to install
Microsoft PowerToys to hide the volume group from Windows Explorer, so
that you (or someone else) doesn't accidentally format the volume group or
do something else with it in Windows.

Regards, Msquared...

[Weiner, Michael]

On Jan 15, 2008 9:25 PM, Msquared <sub2.fedoralist(a)msquared.id.au&gt; wrote:

>  On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 11:17:41AM +1030, Tim wrote:
>
>  > You can format a partition as VFAT *or* LVM, it can't be both at the
>  > same time.
>
>  I think Michael has a logical volume in the volume group, and that logical
>  volume is VFAT.
>
>  Michael: if you want Windows to see that logical volume, I don't think
>  this is possible.  If I were setting up a dual-boot system where I needed
>  to share information, I'd set it up with partitions like so:
>
>   1: /boot (ext3; 100MB)
>   2: C: (FAT; for Windows)
>   3: D: (FAT; for shared space)
>   4: volume group (for Linux installation)
>
>  Also, be aware that Windows will see the Linux volume group as a drive
>  that it thinks it can do stuff with, so you might want to install
>  Microsoft PowerToys to hide the volume group from Windows Explorer, so
>  that you (or someone else) doesn't accidentally format the volume group or
>  do something else with it in Windows.
>  
Msquared

Thank you for your response, and  you are quite right. I have a logical
volume within a volume group that is fat32 (mounted as vfat in fstab). I
finally decided there was no way for XP to see it  all it would see was the
entire volume group as a single raw disk with 0 bytes free and 0 bytes used,
LOL. So, i re-installed using the old fashioned partioning without LVM
advantages and that of course worked.

Thanks all for the responses.
Michael Weiner

[Tim]

On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 10:29 -0500, Weiner, Michael wrote:
>  I have a machine with 2 disks in it, one runs winXP, the other
> Fedora. I
>  want to take a logical volume from the linux side that is currently
>  formatted as vfat (FAT32) and be able to see it on the windows side. The
>  linux side is LVM, and I am having issues seeing the lv on the windows
>  side. Is this possible? Has any one done this before? And can anyone
>  share any tips to help make this work? 
You can format a partition as VFAT *or* LVM, it can't be both at the
same time.

If you've got a LVM partition showing up as VFAT that probably means
that you prepared that partition for use as VFAT, but then reformatted
it to be LVM.  The partition type will only set the default that a
format will do, you can override the default.  Reformatting doesn't
reset the partition type to show how it was formatted.

See <http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs> for something that can read
LVM on Windows.  I haven't tried it myself, I just read a reference to
it on a website.

-- 
[tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.23.12-52.fc7 i686 i386

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