I've got my dual boot system setup using LILO and it seems to work fine. Only problem is, I can't seem to find a way to share files between the two OSes since they both use different FATs. I've managed to transfer files between the two OSes by copying files onto a dos floppy. But that limits me to less than 1.44 MB data transfer. What I want to do is make a partition where linux and windows can read and write to it, so that I wouldn't have to pull one these lame floppy disk data transfer thingy. :P I've read somewhere that linux can read fat32. Ronald, Newbie who not only needs help with FAT, but also CD-ROM, Modem/PPP, etc. :P :P :P

Unless you are running a pretty old kernel your Linux distro can see your Windoze partition with no problems. Some distros will setup Dos/Windows connectivity for you on install, but you can do it yourself using Linuxconf or eqivalent. As for detailed instructions on this and modem config, kppp etc you need a book! I don't know what distro you are running but e.g. Redhat have a Getting Started and Reference Guide free to download in PDF format. There are also loads of HowTo's out there...try http://linuxfaq.quartz.net.nz for starters. Hope this helps (a bit) Delboy:-)

Latest Linux kernels now can read Fat32 partitions. So there shouldnt be any problems sharing files b/w Linux and Win 98.

Thank you, Delboy and V. Vijay Kumar!! I apologize for not typing in which distribution I have. It's RedHat 6.2. As for the problem, I found the answer. I'm an absolute newbie and I did not know the existance of the "mount" command. I used: mount -t vfat /dev/hdb4 /pub OR mount -t vfat /dev/hd?? /mountdirectory hopefully with a little more research I can "mount" the CD drive. Although it seems like my CD is already mounted. /dev/cdrom or something like that. Thank you very much both for your time. :) AND I hope my ignorant question will save other newbies some embarassment.

Ouch! Just found out, I have to remount the partition everytime I logon. PLUS, I have to do it as root. *sigh* Found a web site where someone suggested editting /etc/fstab. I added the following line: /dev/hdb4 /e vfat noauto 0 0 which doesn't seem to work. Can anyone suggest a way for me to fix fstab? or perhaps another way for linux to mount the fat32 partition automatically at boot time? Thank you :)

/dev/hda4 /mnt/windows vfat AUTO 0 0 entries in fstab with "noauto" option are ignored at boot time since mount is invoked with -a option. Try man fstab and man mount

Also you can use "user" as an option to each line of fstab to allow non-root users to mount that device