How to make Puppy & Quirky see exFAT flash drives? [Solved]

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jd7654
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How to make Puppy & Quirky see exFAT flash drives? [Solved]

#1 Post by jd7654 »

Question on how to configure Puppy and Quirky to display desktop drive icons for exFAT formatted flash drives:

It works fine in Fatdog: exFAT drive shows up when inserted, and can click on icon to mount it.

In Quirky 8, after installing exfat-fuse package, drive icons still do not show up, but you can launch Pmount and the drive is there with the option to mount.

In Puppy,(Tahr, Xerus) after installing exfat-fuse package, drive icons do not show up, and neither does Pmount show the drive. So you'd have to manually mount with something like:
# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/flash

In Slacko, exFAT package not available in PPM, but you can manually download and install fuse-exfat Slackware package. But neither drive icons nor Pmount mount options are available, so you have to manually issue mount command.

Is there a way to configure Puppy and Quirky to show exFAT formatted desktop drive icons and Pmount options?

Major distros usually have exFAT support installed by default, as large flash cards >32GB typically come default with exFAT format.
Last edited by jd7654 on Thu 09 Mar 2017, 16:33, edited 3 times in total.

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bigpup
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#2 Post by bigpup »

Here is one solution.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99335

Talks about a exfat-utils.
Did you also install that?

If you download from PPM, the program packages may be listed as exfat-fuse and exfat-utils.
Last edited by bigpup on Tue 28 Feb 2017, 23:32, edited 1 time in total.
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jd7654
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#3 Post by jd7654 »

bigpup wrote:Here is one solution.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=99335

Talks about a exfat-utils.
Did you also install that?
Yes, forgot to mention that. I usually install both together: exfat-fuse and exfat-utils.

However, that does not make Puppy/Quirky function like Fatdog, in treating exFAT the same as other compatible formatted drives with drive icon automatically appearing when inserted. I guess this question should be more directed at Fatdog creators to ask what they did to make it work. Is it just a simple config change?

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#4 Post by bigpup »

You did reboot after installing the exfat program packages?
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#5 Post by jd7654 »

bigpup wrote:You did reboot after installing the exfat program packages?
Oh yes, reboot, re-install, many times, across many Puppy and Quirky versions as noted above. I always install exFAT support on all the Puppy/Quirky I've tried. Just wanting to get the easy point and click part to work.

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#6 Post by bigpup »

This pet was made for Tahrpup 6.0.5 32bit.

exfat_old_puppies_trusty.pet
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 443#938443

I got it working for me, but never really used it much.
Not sure how it will work in other Puppy versions.

Here is where the code was changed in Woof-CE to support exfat.
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... c5d540cc8b
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#7 Post by Flash »

I once bought an exFAT flash drive. At first I thought it was defective because Puppy couldn't see it. When I discovered the reason why, I used Gparted to reformat it to NTFS. Puppy saw that with no problem.

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#8 Post by bigpup »

Gparted seems to have legal issues with support for exfat.

From Gparted forum:
Re: exFAT

When I last looked at exFAT there appeared to be a licensing issue with Microsoft and the exFAT file system.

The GParted project does not have a legal team, and hence relies on the actions of major GNU/Linux distributions when deciding whether to include a package in GParted Live.

Previously we stated that we would hold off on using exFAT until all major GNU/Linux distributions were distributing an exFAT package. Today when I checked, Red Hat still does not offer an exFAT package.
This is latest statement from Gparted developer.
It is important to note that open source and other publicly available
implementations of exFAT do not include a patent license from
Microsoft. A license is required in order to implement exFAT and use
it in a product or device.

Until the licensing changes, or someone pays for an exFAT license, I believe it is best to leave exFAT support at detection only.
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#9 Post by jd7654 »

bigpup wrote:This pet was made for Tahrpup 6.0.5 32bit.

exfat_old_puppies_trusty.pet
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 443#938443
I just tried that Pet on Tahrpup 6.0.5 32bit, and that looks like it did the trick.
But that Pet includes the system changes plus the exFAT binaries for Tahr, so doesn't look like it would apply well to other Puppy and Quirky versions.
bigpup wrote:Here is where the code was changed in Woof-CE to support exfat.
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... c5d540cc8b
Thanks for the link. So looks like that's a fairly recent change in WoofCE last month for exFAT support, and going forward new Puppies may include those fixes. Not sure if these changes will be going over to Barry's WoofQ for Quirky too?

The Git showed 4 system files/scripts changed:
/sbin/probepart
/usr/sbin/pmount
/usr/sbin/filemnt
/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_startup

But the Pet package had 8 system files, in addition to the exFAT binaries:
/sbin/probepart
/bin/mount
/usr/sbin/pmount
/usr/sbin/filemnt
/usr/local/bin/drive_all
/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_startup
/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_change
/usr/local/pup_event/frontend_funcs

I suppose some kind of Pet patch for just those system files could be made, but I already see some differences in Tahr and Slacko, and huge differences compared to Quirky for those system files.

Oh well, thought it was just a simple config change. it would require small individual changes to each existing Puppy/Quirky I have to make it work across all. But at least I know where to look now. :wink:
Last edited by jd7654 on Wed 01 Mar 2017, 07:18, edited 1 time in total.

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#10 Post by jd7654 »

bigpup wrote:Gparted seems to have legal issues with support for exfat.
Yeah, exFAT is still a grey area. Loose distros like Ubuntu/Mint have it. Redhat/Fedora are more strict, I think I did have to install from RPM Fusion separately if I recall. Arch has it in their repos and works fine from Pacman install with various file managers.

But exFAT is so common now, and Linux exfat-fuse implementation seems to work fine. I use it a lot and makes it easy to exchange files with anyone who leaves their drive exFAT.

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#11 Post by Burn_IT »

It doesn't matter how common it is, copyright law still applies and if the Linux distribution has not got permission, using it is illegal.
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#12 Post by Flash »

How come it's legal for Puppy to be able to use NTFS but not exFAT? As I understand it, the programs that allow Puppy to read and write in the NTFS filesystem were reverse-engineered, so they owe nothing to Microsoft, which patented NTFS. Surely someone can do the same for exFAT, which Microsoft also patented.

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#13 Post by Burn_IT »

Microsoft relaxed their copywrite on NTFS
They probably wouldn't charge for ExFAT either, but it would be polite to seek permission, after all they want people to use it.
"Just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush" - T Pratchett

Pelo

SUbject has been resolved by our expert Medor

#14 Post by Pelo »

SUbject has been resolved by our expert Medor, some libs must be added.
Augras made a pet for that subject ici, topic en français

jd7654
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Re: SUbject has been resolved by our expert Medor

#15 Post by jd7654 »

Pelo wrote:SUbject has been resolved by our expert Medor, some libs must be added.
Augras made a pet for that subject ici, topic en français
After bigpup showed me that Github link, I did reply to Augras about it, noting a bug in the exFAT code modifications that he made his .pet package from. I was also later informed that this was already fixed upstream in the main WoofCE on Git.

But I just made a bunch of .pet patches myself from the older code, and can apply exFAT fixes to Puppy, Slacko, Quirky and April now. So I'm all good.

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#16 Post by jd7654 »

Just noticed that Barry has been watching and has also updated (future) Quirky to support exFAT:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00512

Thanks Barry!

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#17 Post by kuman11 »

jd7654 wrote:

But I just made a bunch of .pet patches myself from the older code, and can apply exFAT fixes to Puppy, Slacko, Quirky and April now. So I'm all good.

Can u post the .pet for Slacko, probably would work for XSlacko too ...?

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