NTFS forced dirty mount in read/write mode?

NTFS forced dirty mount in read/write mode?

[Digital Parasite]

Hello,

I am using a Linux 2.6.11 based system and love the ability for the
new NTFS driver to mount the file-system as read/write.

The problem that I am having is if I mount an NTFS partition, then the
machine loses power or the machine is rebooted without explicitly
unmounting the partition, I can then only mount it as read-only and
get the message:

"NTFS-fs error (device hda1): load_system_files(): Volume is dirty..."

That is even if all I do is mount the filesystem but do not perform
any reads/writes, and the system gets rebooted.

Is there any way to force Linux to mount the partition read/write even
though it is dirty?  I am not be able to boot into Windows to run
chkdsk from there to correct the problem so what are my options?

Since there is no way to add or remove files on an NTFS filesystem
with the curren driver, only update the contents of existing files, is
it even a problem for the volume to be dirty?  Nothing in the volume
bitmap would be changing right?

If it was possible to force a read/write mount when the volume is
dirty, when you then unmounted the system, would it bring the log
files back into sync so it would no longer be dirty?    By dirty, I'm
guessing there is some discrepency between the primary and backup NTFS
bitmap/log files right?

Thanks in advance,
DP

Re: NTFS forced dirty mount in read/write mode?

[Anton Altaparmakov]

On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 10:55 -0400, Digital Parasite wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am using a Linux 2.6.11 based system and love the ability for the
> new NTFS driver to mount the file-system as read/write.
> 
> The problem that I am having is if I mount an NTFS partition, then the
> machine loses power or the machine is rebooted without explicitly
> unmounting the partition, I can then only mount it as read-only and
> get the message:
> 
> "NTFS-fs error (device hda1): load_system_files(): Volume is dirty..."
> 
> That is even if all I do is mount the filesystem but do not perform
> any reads/writes, and the system gets rebooted.
> 
> Is there any way to force Linux to mount the partition read/write even
> though it is dirty?  I am not be able to boot into Windows to run
> chkdsk from there to correct the problem so what are my options?
> 
> Since there is no way to add or remove files on an NTFS filesystem
> with the curren driver, only update the contents of existing files, is
> it even a problem for the volume to be dirty?  Nothing in the volume
> bitmap would be changing right?
> 
> If it was possible to force a read/write mount when the volume is
> dirty, when you then unmounted the system, would it bring the log
> files back into sync so it would no longer be dirty?    By dirty, I'm
> guessing there is some discrepency between the primary and backup NTFS
> bitmap/log files right?

No, it is not possible to do that.  Sorry.

You can edit the source to disable the dirty check and then it will work
but I would not recommend this.  The ntfs driver depends on chkdsk to
fix problems when the volume is dirty before it mounts read-write.

Best regards,

        Anton
-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Unix Support, Computing Service, University of Cambridge, CB2 3QH, UK
Linux NTFS maintainer / IRC: #ntfs on irc.freenode.net
WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/ & http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: NTFS forced dirty mount in read/write mode?

[Yura Pakhuchiy]

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On Thu, 2005-04-21 at 10:55 -0400, Digital Parasite wrote: 
> Is there any way to force Linux to mount the partition read/write even
> though it is dirty?  I am not be able to boot into Windows to run
> chkdsk from there to correct the problem so what are my options?

I tried to submit such patch half of year ago. But Anton declined it, so
I use it locally. My patch in attachment, feel free to use if you need.
But as Anton already said it's not safe to force read-write mount, so
beware of data loss.

-- 
Best regards,
        Yura

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