vfat filesystem mysteriously becomes read-only

[Eric Hanchrow]

I have a partition that has Windows 98 installed on it.  When Linux is
running, I have it regularly copy a few useful files onto the Windows
98 partition, as a simple backup.  I do the copying with an entry in
my crontab (this particular entry converts my .mailrc into a form that
Outlook Express can parse):

    0,10,20,30,40,50   * *   *   *   awk 'BEGIN {print "Name,E-mail 
Address,Home Street,Home City,Home Postal Code,Home State,Home Country,Home 
Phone,Business Street,Business City,Business Postal Code,Business 
State,Business Country,Business Phone,Company,Job Title"} {print $2 "," $3 
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,"}' .mailrc  > /windoze/windows/temp/addresses

This works sometimes, but if I leave the computer alone for a few
hours, I'll get mail complaining that the command failed because
`/windoze' is a read-only file system:

    From: root (Cron Daemon)
    Subject: Cron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
    To: offby1
    Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:50:00 -0700 (PDT)
    X-From-Line: root Sun Aug 29 10:50:00 1999
Return-Path: <root>
Received: by blarg.net
        via sendmail from stdin
        id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Debian Smail3.2.0.102)
        for offby1; Sun, 29 Aug 1999 10:50:00 -0700 (PDT) 
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
X-Cron-Env: <SHELL=/bin/sh>
X-Cron-Env: <HOME=/home/offby1>
X-Cron-Env: <PATH=/usr/bin:/bin>
X-Cron-Env: <LOGNAME=offby1>
Lines: 2
Xref: snowball mail.misc:2896

    /bin/sh: /windoze/windows/temp/addresses: Read-only file system

I've noticed disturbing messages from `dmesg' as well, that might be related:

    07:57:05 [offby1]# dmesg | tail
    Directory sread (sector 0x8000100b) failed
    attempt to access beyond end of device
    03:01: rw=0, want=1073743878, limit=1048288
    Directory sread (sector 0x8000100b) failed
    attempt to access beyond end of device
    03:01: rw=0, want=1073743878, limit=1048288
    Directory sread (sector 0x8000100b) failed
    attempt to access beyond end of device
    03:01: rw=0, want=1073743878, limit=1048288
    Directory sread (sector 0x8000100b) failed

Here's the relevant entry in /etc/fstab, so you can see I'm not
mounting it read-only to start with:

        /dev/hda1 /windoze vfat rw,uid=1000 0 0

Do you have any idea why this is happening, and what I can do to fix
it?

Please respond directly to me, as I don't read this list.

Thanks