OpenSource NTFS Drivers

[Sgeo]

http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/...e.html#example implies that there are open source drivers for read-write NTFS. How would I use those, and could those be included in the next version of Knoppix? Or am I a completely mistaken noob?

[firebyrd10]

If they are talking about captive ntfs, then thats already in knoppix.

[pau1knopp]

captive ntfs utilizes microsofts proprietary ntfs drivers for the linux environment. that part of it is definately not open source. in all the reading that i have done (not much recently) creating a true open source ntfs driver could be very tricky to get it write (er, right i meant, but couldn't pass up a bad pun) without causing data corruption errors.

i finally got captive working and it seems to do the trick quite well for my purposes.

~pau1

[firebyrd10]

captive ntfs utilizes microsofts proprietary ntfs drivers for the linux environment. that part of it is definately not open source. in all the reading that i have done (not much recently) creating a true open source ntfs driver could be very tricky to get it write (er, right i meant, but couldn't pass up a bad pun) without causing data corruption errors.

i finally got captive working and it seems to do the trick quite well for my purposes.

~pau1

Well they have kernel drivers that can change a file but nothing more.

Its a start.

[Irgu]

captive ntfs utilizes microsofts proprietary ntfs drivers for the linux environment. that part of it is definately not open source. in all the reading that i have done (not much recently) creating a true open source ntfs driver could be very tricky to get it write (er, right i meant, but couldn't pass up a bad pun) without causing data corruption errors.

There are two different open source drivers for Linux, written by different developers. One of them is in 2.4 and earlier kernels and the new one is in Linux 2.6 kernels.

The write support was disabled 3-4 years ago in the old driver because it corrupted W2K and XP NTFS due to the driver was written for NT4 NTFS .

The new driver supports all versions of NTFS but only file overwriting is possible. You get "Permission denied" or "Not supported" messages whenever you want to do something else write related. Write support isn't fully implemented yet because it needs a lot of time due to complexity of NTFS, moreover none of the Linux vendors support or sponsor its development so it's being worked on only if the volunteer developers have some spare time.

But Captive NTFS can indeed corrupt NTFS. Unfortunately it was also recently announced by its developer that he doesn't support it anymore: http://www.jankratochvil.net/piperma...er/000630.html

BTW, there are also several NTFS utilities developed by the same team who wrote the safe and new open source NTFS driver. Those utilities are also safe to use: ntfsundelete, ntfsresize, ntfsclone, ntfslabel, etc.