====== Working with and using exFAT Filesystems ======

Many high capacity (>= 64Gb) portable media (microSDXC/SDXC/USB drives) use the [[wp>exFAT]] file system these days.  A bit of work is required to get things working under Gentoo, hopefully this page will be of some use to others.

===== Overview =====

This particular file system type is handled under GNU/Linux using the [[wp>Filesystem_in_Userspace|FUSE]] (Filesystem in Userspace).

===== Kernel =====

You need to enable support for [[wp>Filesystem_in_Userspace|FUSE]] in your kernel.

<code>
File systems ->
  <*> FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) support 
</code>

Save your configuration recompile your kernel and reboot.

===== Userspace Programs =====

You'll need a few filesystem and userspace tools installed too in order to detect, mount and work with FUSE filesystems

<code>
emerge -av sys-fs/fuse-exfat sys-fs/udisks
</code>

This will also pull in ''sys-fs/fuse'' which is a dependency.

===== Mounting and read/writing =====

Once you've updated your kernel support for FUSE and installed the required tools you're ready to mount the drive.  Insert your media into your card-reader (or equivalent) and from a command prompt check what device it is with either ''dmesg'' or ''cat /proc/partitions'' (it should be the last item listed in the later as you will have only just inserted the drive).  You now need to add a line to ''/etc/fstab'' to tell your system where to mount the device, I use ''/mnt/usb2'' so have the following in my ''/etc/fstab''

<code>
/dev/sdh1		/mnt/usb2	auto		noauto,rw,users	0 0
</code>


Assuming the device is assigned to ''/dev/sdh1'' you can now issue the following command (hopefully as a user, if not add yourself to the ''users'' group in the ''/etc/group'' file) to mount the drive...


<code>
$ udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdh1
Mounted /dev/sdh1 at /mnt/usb2.
</code>

You should now be able to copy files too and from the storage without any permissions problems (something I couldn't work around with a simple ''/etc/fstab'' entry).


===== Links =====

  * [[wp>exFAT]]
  * [[wp>Filesystem_in_Userspace|FUSE]] (FileSystem in UserSpace)
  * [[https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-936634-start-0.html|Gentoo Forums : exFAT and FUSE]]