Hi, I would like to know, why this isn't working for me?

$ mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/pcdisk -tvfat

It's too large (80GB FAT32) partition? How to mount it?
I'm using Gentoo LiveDVD, Niktarix (Knoppix based) mounts this FAT32 disk automatically.

luky-amiga,

I assume you are putting a space between "-t" and "vfat."

I also assume you have vfat support enabled in the kernel as well as PC BIOS partition support.

Can you post the output of dmesg | grep hdb as root?

--Aaron
Gentoo 2005.0
Kernel 2.6.11-skunk6

$ dmesg | grep hdb

ide:0 BM-DMA at 0x1020-0x1027, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
hdb: Maxtor 6Y080L0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: max request size: 128KiB
hdb: 160086528 sectors (81964 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdb: cache flushes supported

$ mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/pcdisk -t vfat

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hdb1, or too many mounted file systems

How can I check this?

cat /proc/filesystems | grep vfat
gzip -cd /proc/config.gz | grep MSDOS_PARTITION

If that last one doesn't work try:
cat /usr/src/linux/.config | grep MSDOS_PARTITION

..it should say CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y.

Yes, it says "CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y".

Did the first command say "vfat"?

No. There is no "vfat"

Ok, then that is most likely the problem. Try modprobe vfat, and if that doesn't work compile vfat support as a module (you find it in: File Systems -> DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -> MSDOS fs support + VFAT (Windows-95) fs support).

luky-amiga,

I'm going to throw this advice in too since this is something that tripped me up.

You'll notice when you enable VFAT that there is a field to select the default codepage. Go to File Systems -> Native Language Support and select the codepage(s) you want (437 for U.S., 805 for Europe) as modules. You must select one of the Codepage XXX entries. Once you know the codepage number, go back to where you enabled VFAT and change (XXX) Default codepage for FAT to the number you want.

--Aaron
Gentoo 2005.5
Kernel 2.6.11-skunk6

modprobe vfat works -> "/proc/filesystems" includes vfat now, but that's all.
Mounting still doesn't work with the same error message

I can try to compile vfat support as a module, but would this change anything?