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When I insert a USB stick or camera flash card I get the following error:

unknown filesystem type 'exfat'

Is there a simple way to add exFAT support to Ubuntu without kernel patching?

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  • Three years later, the answers below do not work. The PPA 404'd so I'm assuming is no longer maintained. Solution: I used a different USB stick. Will reformat this one in Windows.
    – Krista K
    May 28, 2013 at 18:19
  • Worked for me on 2013-06-28 for Ubuntu 12.04.
    – mivk
    Jun 28, 2013 at 10:23

3 Answers 3

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Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10 (13.10 and higher)

Adding additional ppas is no longer required. Also, it seems fuse-exfat is no longer installable. The package to install is now named exfat-fuse and is available by default (universe repository). The package exfat-utils will also add the usual filesystem management tools including this package. Also thanks to this answer

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

Ubuntu 12.04 (13.04 and lower)

A more detailed, step-to-step description on how to use the PPA pointed to by StalkerNOVA can be found on stackoverflow, copied here for the sake of completeness:

Do only once:

  1. Add the repository: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:relan/exfat
  2. Update the package list: sudo apt-get update
  3. Install the exfat package: sudo apt-get install fuse-exfat
  4. Create the mount folder: sudo mkdir /media/exfat

Everytime you want to access sdxc the card/exfat filesystem:

  1. Mount the filesystem (replace sdc1 with your exfat partition): sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdc1 /media/exfat On some devices, cameras, for locked sdxc cards etc you might want to mount the filesystem read only, just add -o ro to the mount command line: sudo mount -t exfat -o ro /dev/sdc1 /media/exfat
  2. Read and write to /media/exfat to your heart's desire.
  3. When you are done, unmount the filesystem: sudo umount /media/exfat

The sdc1 in the step-by-step above refers to the linux device where your card/exfat filesystem resides on. If this changes (usb card readers, cameras) or you simply don't know which one it could be either use the menu system System -> Administration -> Disk Util and usually you will find your camera or card reader in the list on the left hand side. Or - as a quick shortcut - use cat /proc/partitions on a terminal command line. The latter is only useful if you know all the other unchanging device names on your system and thus can quickly identify the one added one.

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  • With Ubuntu 12.04, you only need points 1 to 3 (add ppa, update, install). Automount will work as usual.
    – mivk
    Jun 28, 2013 at 10:33
5

Google showed the answer... https://launchpad.net/~relan/+archive/exfat

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4

For Ubuntu 14.04 there is a package called exfat-fuse. The following worked for me:

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse
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