[ltp] Captive Linux GPL NTFS Driver

[Tod Harter]

I suspect its something of a combination of things, its a harder FS to support 
than most because its so proprietary (and frankly it has a pretty oddball and 
not so well-designed on-disk structure as well) AND your dealing with meta 
data semantics that are quite different. The result is not too many OSS 
developers are terribly interested. What surprises me more is that we don't 
have better ext2/3 support in win32. The code and the knowledge are widely 
available, you would think if NT and its successors can still support FAT32, 
with basically NO access control at all, they should be able to deal with 
Unix style semantics. Samba after all has been crossing that bridge for years 
and they do OK. 

I suppose the other answer is that the ONLY time these days you need this kind 
of tool is stand-alone dual-boot workstations like laptops. If I need data in 
NT thats on Linux I just share it on my LAN, so I suspect demand for this 
kind of tool is fading... 

On Saturday 06 March 2004 3:16 pm, Michael Stilkerich wrote:
> Hmm always thought that Microsoft did not release any specs of the NTFS
> filesystem and thus the linux driver was based on reverse engineering..
> I have to admit that I don't know anything about the access control
> semantics of the NTFS Filesystem, I never used it..
>
> But as I said I read about Captive in an article of a magazine and did
> not read anything about problems when creating files or doing any of the
> "normal" stuff..
>
> Mike.
>
> * Tod Harter <tharter@rhombus.net> [2004-03-06 21:00]:
> > Remember, the reason why historically Linux NTFS drivers haven't
> > supported writing has nothing much to do with either stability or any
> > technical difficulty in implementing the necessary routines.
> >
> > The reason is simply that access control semantics for NTFS are utterly
> > foreign to Unix access control semantics, so there is no really good
> > meaningful way to map NTFS metadata acceptably. This isn't TOO big a deal
> > when you're reading data from the file system, at worst you just ignore
> > access control, but as soon as you want to start CREATING files and
> > directories, then you have a problem...
> >
> > On Saturday 06 March 2004 2:35 pm, Michael Stilkerich wrote:
> > > As I said above, I read about captive in either Linux Magazine or c't
> > > and they tested it and said it's really stable.
> > >
> > > The Homepage says
> > > As opposed to other projects this is currently the only software
> > > supporting the full read/write access including the possibility to
> > > create/delete files, modify directories etc.
> > >
> > > I would give it a try if I were you..
> > >
> > > Mike.
> > >
> > > * Joel Ebel <jbebel@ncsu.edu> [2004-03-06 20:28]:
> > > > If you care about windows at all, then you you should use NTFS for
> > > > it. FAT32 cripples windows, and makes the filesystem very inefficient
> > > > and insecure.  While there are methods of getting write support to
> > > > NTFS from within linux, I still do not trust them.  I don't want a
> > > > bug to destroy my windows partition.  Read only works ok, so I will
> > > > frequently copy copy files from NTFS to linux from within linux, but
> > > > not the other way around.  I do as many people here have already
> > > > said, and have an intermediate FAT32 partition called scratch where I
> > > > can put files that need to go from linux to windows.  I used to be
> > > > use explore2fs
> > > > (http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm) to read linux
> > > > files from within windows, but I now use reiserfs in Linux, and I
> > > > have not known of any such comparable tool.  So for me, I must use
> > > > the scratch partition for any OS to OS transfer besides windows to
> > > > linux from within linux.
> > > >
> > > > Joel
> > > >
> > > > Vincent Touquet wrote:
> > > > >For the people who use a Windows version and Linux
> > > > >on their Thinpad: do you go with NTFS for Windows,
> > > > >or do you stick with FAT32 ?
> > > > >
> > > > >best regards,
> > > > >
> > > > >v
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> > > > http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
> >
> > --
> > Tod Harter
> > Giant Electronic Brain
> > http://www.giantelectronicbrain.com
> >
> > --
> > The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> > http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

-- 
Tod Harter
Giant Electronic Brain
http://www.giantelectronicbrain.com