(CardSpace + FAT32) == Unhappiness
Important installation note for people wanting to play with CardSpace: CardSpace only works when installed on an NTFS filesystem. If you are planning on setting up the July CTP and playing with CardSpace, make sure your C: drive is not FAT32. Here is the error you will see if you try to run CardSpace and you are not using NTFS (note the bolded sentence):
The description for Event ID ( 102 ) in Source ( Microsoft.InfoCards.Diagnostics 3.0.0.0 ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: The Windows CardSpace service cannot be started on this file system., at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.ExceptionUtility.TraceFailFast(String message, EventLogger logger)
at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.ExceptionUtility.TraceFailFast(String message)
at Microsoft.InfoCards.Diagnostics.DiagnosticUtility.FailFast(String message)
at Microsoft.InfoCards.Diagnostics.InfoCardTrace.FailFast(String message)
at Microsoft.InfoCards.InfoCardService.FailFastIfNoFileSystemSecurity()
at Microsoft.InfoCards.InfoCardService..ctor()
at wmain()
at _wmainCRTStartup()
I have no idea what would happen if you installed the .Net Framework 3.0 on a FAT32 filesystem first, and then converted that filesystem to NTFS. If anyone happens to try this, drop me a comment and let me know how it goes.
I also do not know if the incompatibility rests with only CardSpace, with all of WCF, or with all of .NET Framework 3.0. Any and all information updates would be welcome.
Ah the trials and tribulations of the intrepid early adopter! How boring would life be if it all just worked? That being said, I do hope that they will put some kind of FAT32 test/warning into the next version of the installation script, otherwise there could be some long-term bad karma accumulation :-)
August 12th, 2006 at 2:53 am
[...] Pamela Dingle has posted some information we need to get out more broadly: Important installation note for people wanting to play with CardSpace: CardSpace only works when installed on an NTFS filesystem. If you are planning on setting up the July CTP and playing with CardSpace, make sure your C: drive is not FAT32. (more…) [...]
August 12th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
[...] Pamela Dingle and Kim Cameron have been very helpful in trying to help me make things work. [...]
August 14th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Pam,
This is actually a good thing.
I know a little about file systems, (and a little about you when you loose data). It is time for the world to abandon FAT32 based systems; it has no protection against data loss, chkdsk included. At least use NTFS, which at least has the *potential* to survive an interruption. (back up your data to a system running something where you will be likely to recover from – I use a Mac and a Linux box myself).
For something like cardspace, which undoubtedly requires that the file system involved be transaction oriented, NTFS is the best that I know of in the Windows world. I’ve heard the rumor that Vista will have a real transaction oriented file system, which will be a good thing for well, cardspace transactions.
FAT32 was a less than great idea when disks were 20MB, it is a serious bad idea when disks are 500GB+.
Don.
Pam says: I couldn’t agree more, I think that FAT32 needs to be put to pasture, can’t say I’m upset about the news. Mostly I just want documentation of the fact. Um, as far as the fancy transactional filesystem from Windows, I think you mean WinFS? If so, I think that it has been
killed, I mean … repurposed.December 10th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
[...] a FAT file system. We’ve received a surprising amount of feedback (some of the earliest from Pamela Dingle) that customers are still using FAT file systems and this is causing problems. This was done [...]