netscape, vfat, kernel 2.4.x

["Timothy J. Ford" <tim_ford@bellsouth.net>]

I have a dual boot Pentium III system with Windoze 98 on hda (vfat fs)
and Debian unstable on hdb (e2fs).  I mount hda with the following line
in /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda1       /windows        vfat    rw,uid=0,gid=100,umask=0
0       0

My wife's email is popped from our ppp down to a file on the vfat drive
using
Netscape messenger 4.76.
In her home directory on hdb, I put a symbolic link to the directory on
hda1 where
netscape downloads the mail from the pop server.

This works fine when I run kernel 2.2.17.
However, I made a custom 2.4.1 kernel and
I see that netscape messenger won't read the files from the mail
directory on hda.
I thought this might be a kernel problem so today I made a 2.4.2 kernel,
and still
netscape messenger won't read the files.

Is this a netscape bug?
It works under 2.2.17 but not 2.4.2.

Is there a reasonable way to workaround this?

--
Timothy J. Ford                  Don't worry Skipper,
4477 N.W. Fifth Avenue           everything's in my hands!
Boca Raton, FL 33431                                    --Gilligan