Umlauts Displayed As Special Characters in FAT Partitions

Support knowledgebase (didge_mount_umlaute)
Applies to

SuSE Linux: All versions

Symptom

German umlauts (two dots placed over vowels) are displayed as special characters in mounted FAT partitions or on FAT floppy disks.

Cause

mount uses a wrong ISO set.

Solution

You must enter the right option, e.g. iocharset=iso8859-1 for floppy disks, in the file /etc/fstab.
/dev/fd0      /floppy                   auto  noauto,user,iocharset=iso8859-1 0   0
After doing this, the umlauts will be properly displayed on FAT floppy disks.
Do the same for the Windows partitions you want to mount.

The following command can be used to mount FAT partitions manually:

mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt -o iocharset=iso8859-1
In this example, /dev/hdb1 is mounted to /mnt.
Keywords: FAT, FAT32, VFAT, VFAT32, MOUNT, UMLAUT, DEUTSCH, GERMAN, SPECIAL CHARACTER

SDB-didge_mount_umlaute, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 19. Jun 2002
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 19. Jun 2002 by ip (sdb_gen 1.40.0)