Current status of NTFS support

Current status of NTFS support

[Wayne.Brown]

Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that it's
still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.  This is important to me
because it looks like I'll have to start using it next week.  My office laptop
is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.  Of course, I hardly ever
boot into Windows any more since installing a Linux partition last year.  But
our corporate email standard forces me to use Lotus Notes, which I run under
Wine.   The Notes executables and databases are installed on my Windows
partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after
installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I
can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my Notes databases
from Linux.  So how risky is this?

Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone
know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under Windows
2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried about what
might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.

I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone can give me.  There's just no way I can
stand going back to using anything but Linux for my daily work.

Wayne

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Jesper Juhl]

Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

> 
> Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment? 

> 
I'll let someone who knows about that answer that part ;)

> Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone
> know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under Windows
> 2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried about what
> might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.
> 
Last time I checked (about 2 months ago) FIPS was not able to work with 
NTFS partitions - you'll probably have to use Partition Magic or 
something similar to modify the NTFS partition (but why not just create 
the NTFS partition of a smaller size and then use the unpartitioned 
space for a ext2 partition?).

Best regards,
Jesper Juhl - juhl@eisenstein.dk

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Thomas Dodd]

Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> 
> partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
> the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after
> installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I
> can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my Notes databases
> from Linux.  So how risky is this?

Why? Just us FAT32 instead of NTFS.Also, Why the repartition?
Just reformat the old FAT32 partition and install over that.

> Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone

Oll you should need is a boot floppy to get back into linux and fix
the MBR (rerun lilo?) after the Windows install.

Don't try to write to and NTFS partition from linux.
You probably don't want to mount the Win2k version of
NTFS in linux either. At one point that could damage the
filesystem too.

	-Thomas

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Anton Altaparmakov]

At 23:08 20/04/2001, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
>Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that 
>it's still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.

It is extremely dangerous. Never use unless you are desperate. It creates 
corrupt files and especially directories. It also cannot delete at all (not 
implemented). - If you do write you have to run ntfsfix utility on the 
partition after umount before rebooting into Windows which will let chkdsk 
run on next reboot which should fix all problems created by the driver. - 
ntfsfix is part of the Linux-NTFS project. You can download the 
source/source rpm or pre-compiled rpm from 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/

>This is important to me because it looks like I'll have to start using it 
>next week. My office laptop is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.

Forget it. Windows 2000 NTFS is supported only read-only. The driver will 
refuse to mount read-write (unless you are using an out of date kernel in 
which case it will probably just destroy your partition!). I strongly 
suggest to use kernel 2.4.4-pre5 at least or a 2.4.x-acXYZ kernel (at least 
2.4.2-ac something IIRC) as these kernels contain many important fixes.

>Of course, I hardly ever boot into Windows any more since installing a 
>Linux partition last year.  But our corporate email standard forces me to 
>use Lotus Notes, which I run under Wine.   The Notes executables and 
>databases are installed on my Windows partition.  The upgrade, though, 
>will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
>the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after 
>installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello 
>NTFS.  I can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my 
>Notes databases from Linux.  So how risky is this?

Simple answer: you can't. 100% data loss is unfortunately guaranteed if you 
start using it like this, maybe not in one day, maybe not in two but 
eventually you will try to boot into Windows and find it doesn't exist any 
more...

>Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does 
>anyone know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under 
>Windows 2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried 
>about what might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.

It can't. You need to buy Partition Magic or similar utility to do this. 
There is AFAIK no free NTFS resizer available (yet!).

The best solution for you is to ask really kindly (by them a beer?) to have 
your laptop installed with one partition which doesn't fill your entire 
disk (i.e. just ask them to make the partition whatever size you want) and 
to use the FAT-32 filesystem instead of NTFS. Windows 2000 is quite happy 
to do both of these. You could even save them the trouble and do the 
partitioning and formatting for them and just ask them to install Windows 
2000 on your C: drive using FAT-32. Then pray they will oblige. Otherwise 
you will have to spend some money on partition magic I am afraid (or 
equivalent obviously).

If you go for the repartition yourself approach you should be able to keep 
your current linux install. You can use GNU parted to resize you Linux 
partitions so you have enough space for Win2k (find it on 
ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/).

Hope this helps,

         Anton


-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Anton Altaparmakov]

At 23:33 20/04/2001, Thomas Dodd wrote:
>Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> > Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the 
> upgrade.  Does anyone
>
>Oll you should need is a boot floppy to get back into linux and fix
>the MBR (rerun lilo?) after the Windows install.

Rerunning lilo is correct fix. But modify your lilo.conf and /etc/fstab to 
reflect eventual changes in partition names first. - You said that two 
partitions are getting merged so there might be changes...

>Don't try to write to and NTFS partition from linux.
>You probably don't want to mount the Win2k version of
>NTFS in linux either. At one point that could damage the
>filesystem too.

This is not true. NTFS driver will NEVER write to your file system unless 
it is mounted read-write. Even if journalling was implemented it still 
wouldn't write to your fs when mounted read only as long as I have 
something to say about it! Read only means read only IMO, full stop, end of 
discussion. - If you have ever seen it write to the disk when mounted read 
only please let me know as I consider this an extremely serious bug!

Best regards,

         Anton


-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Robert Szentmihalyi]

> Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that it's
> still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.  This is important to
> me because it looks like I'll have to start using it next week.  My office
> laptop is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.  Of course, I
> hardly ever boot into Windows any more since installing a Linux partition
> last year.  But our corporate email standard forces me to use Lotus Notes,
> which I run under Wine.   The Notes executables and databases are installed
> on my Windows partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard
> drive, allocating the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and
> reinstalling Notes after installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye
> FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I can't mount it read-only because I'll
> still have to update my Notes databases from Linux.  So how risky is this?

I would not recommend enabling NTFS write support for the moment...
Why don't you install Windows 2000 on a FAT32 partition (choose FAT32 during 
installation)?
It's no problem running Win2k on a FAT32 partition if you don't need NTFS 
ACLs.

>
> Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does
> anyone know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under
> Windows 2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried
> about what might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.
This will not work AFAIK
>
> I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone can give me.  There's just no way
> I can stand going back to using anything but Linux for my daily work.
>
> Wayne
>

 Regards,
   Robert

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Lee Leahu]

would somebody be kind enough to explain why writing to 
the ntfs file system is extremely dangerous,  and what are the
developers doing to make writing to ntfs filesystem safe?

-- 
lee@ricis.com,
Open Source + Linux = Freedom

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[J. Dow]

From: "Lee Leahu" <lee@ricis.com>

> would somebody be kind enough to explain why writing to 
> the ntfs file system is extremely dangerous,  and what are the
> developers doing to make writing to ntfs filesystem safe?

My understanding of the situation is that writing to an NTFS volume is not
quite 100% guaranteed to destroy the disk directory structure. MS mutates it
faster than people can reverse engineer it in a proper "clean" manner. The
person who had been working the issue had access to MS information in support
of some other products. MS came down on him about supporting NTFS. So he has
surrendered such materials as he has rather than continue with the MS product
support and is concentrating on Linux. But until his NDA runs out he cannot
work on the NTFS code. Other people have picked up the ball. But as noted
MS mutates NTFS remarkably rapidly so I'd not look for support for NTFS in
the near future.

I have oversimplified the whole issue for which I hope others forgive me. I
see no benefit to a rehash of the issue so I am attempting to inject enough
information that it will be dropped.

{^_^}    Joanne Dow, jdow@earthlink.net

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Doug McNaught]

Lee Leahu <lee@ricis.com> writes:

> would somebody be kind enough to explain why writing to 
> the ntfs file system is extremely dangerous,  and what are the
> developers doing to make writing to ntfs filesystem safe?

It's dangerous because NTFS is a proprietary format, and the full
rules for updating it (including journals etc) are known only to
Microsoft and those that have signed Microsoft NDAs.  If you update it
incorrectly it gets corrupted and you will lose data.  It's certainly
possible to reverse-engineer these rules, but very difficult and
time-consuming.

-Doug
-- 
The rain man gave me two cures; he said jump right in,
The first was Texas medicine--the second was just railroad gin,
And like a fool I mixed them, and it strangled up my mind,
Now people just get uglier, and I got no sense of time...          --Dylan

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Lee Leahu]

On Friday 20 April 2001 20:39, you wrote:
> Lee Leahu <lee@ricis.com> writes:
> > would somebody be kind enough to explain why writing to
> > the ntfs file system is extremely dangerous,  and what are the
> > developers doing to make writing to ntfs filesystem safe?
>
> It's dangerous because NTFS is a proprietary format, and the full
> rules for updating it (including journals etc) are known only to
> Microsoft and those that have signed Microsoft NDAs.  If you update it
> incorrectly it gets corrupted and you will lose data.  It's certainly
> possible to reverse-engineer these rules, but very difficult and
> time-consuming.
>
> -Doug

my boss rememebres reading a very indepth article in one of the msdn 
magazines.  i could scan the articles in and compress them and send them to 
the developers. i want to help the ntfs movement on linux.  would somebody be 
willing to teach me the ropes of reverse engineering of software.  i am a 
faster learner, and very interested in reverse engineering of software.

i have access to the msdn library and maganzies and have lot of free time for 
dedicated ntfs code hacking.

-- 
lee@ricis.com,
Open Source + Linux = Freedom

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Tom Leete]

Lee Leahu wrote:
> 
> On Friday 20 April 2001 20:39, you wrote:
> > Lee Leahu <lee@ricis.com> writes:
> > > would somebody be kind enough to explain why writing to
> > > the ntfs file system is extremely dangerous,  and what are the
> > > developers doing to make writing to ntfs filesystem safe?
> >
> > It's dangerous because NTFS is a proprietary format, and the full
> > rules for updating it (including journals etc) are known only to
> > Microsoft and those that have signed Microsoft NDAs.  If you update it
> > incorrectly it gets corrupted and you will lose data.  It's certainly
> > possible to reverse-engineer these rules, but very difficult and
> > time-consuming.
> >
> > -Doug
> 
> my boss rememebres reading a very indepth article in one of the msdn
> magazines.  i could scan the articles in and compress them and send them to
> the developers. i want to help the ntfs movement on linux.  would somebody be
> willing to teach me the ropes of reverse engineering of software.  i am a
> faster learner, and very interested in reverse engineering of software.

Copyright interferes with that route, and I'm sure Microsoft would be happy
to
enforce that. Links to the msdn.microsoft.com library/kb articles would be
good.

> i have access to the msdn library and maganzies and have lot of free time for
> dedicated ntfs code hacking.

Also good.

Cheers,
Tom
-- 
The Daemons lurk and are dumb. -- Emerson

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Anton Altaparmakov]

At 03:07 21/04/2001, Lee Leahu wrote:
>On Friday 20 April 2001 20:39, you wrote:
> > Lee Leahu <lee@ricis.com> writes:
>my boss rememebres reading a very indepth article in one of the msdn
>magazines.  i could scan the articles in and compress them and send them 
>to the developers.

Since you can access the library for free at msdn.microsoft.com/library 
that would be a waster of your time. Just give the references to the 
article. If however you mean the "inside NTFS" and "inside Windows 2000 
NTFS" by Mark Russinovich then yes they are great but no they are not 
in-depth enough in that you have to complete the picture by mapping his 
"logical" information to the actual "physical" on disk information. Which 
admittedly is not that difficult with NTFS DiskEdit or any other hex editor 
most of the time... That's how I got the system files indexing keys and 
indexed data, the format of $Secure, etc, etc... (-;

I would be surprised if you are referring to any articles I haven't found 
yet but please try me. (-: I would be happy to have missed out some really 
cool article which gives even more information.

>i want to help the ntfs movement on linux.  would somebody be willing to 
>teach me the ropes of reverse engineering of software.  i am a faster 
>learner, and very interested in reverse engineering of software.

Do you understand assembly language? If not this is a _very_ long learning 
curve! Reverse engineering consists of three things:

1. Use a hexeditor or NTFS DiskEdit (provided by MS on NT4SP4 CD) and study 
the structures on disk and play with files, e.g. compress/uncompress, 
encrypt/decrypt, apply quotas, apply ACLs, and look at how the disk changes.

2. Use a disassembler (I use IDA Pro from www.datarescue.com/idapro, 
excellent product btw!) to get at the human readable form of ntfs.sys  and 
associated system files. Fortunately MS provides some debugging symbols on 
their web site which help a lot as they name some of the functions and 
global variables so you have some idea of what is going on right away. - 
This is extremely time consuming. - My current NTFS.sys disassembled file 
(from WinNT4 ntfs.sys) has 171460 lines! A _lot_ of code...

3. Use a kernel mode debugger (like SoftIce for example) and place break 
points inside the NTFS driver in memory and then trace execution to see 
what values are contained in some of the driver's variables, what functions 
call what, what they do, etc.

Without a working knowledge of assembly language points 2 and 3 are 
impossible...

>i have access to the msdn library and maganzies

So does everyone. They are free on the net.

>  and have lot of free time for dedicated ntfs code hacking.

Now that is cool. (-:

If you are really interested join the linux-ntfs project on Sourceforge. 
The documentation provided by the header files is the most in depth and 
most complete docs about NTFS you will ever find... You can use that 
knowledge to either help linux-ntfs development or just take the knowledge 
and use it to fix the existing driver instead. I welcome patches! [Make 
sure to download CVS and not the released version as that is very out of date.]

Anton


-- 
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Ben Ford]

Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

>
>Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that it's
>still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.  This is important to me
>because it looks like I'll have to start using it next week.  My office laptop
>is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.  Of course, I hardly ever
>boot into Windows any more since installing a Linux partition last year.  But
>our corporate email standard forces me to use Lotus Notes, which I run under
>Wine.   The Notes executables and databases are installed on my Windows
>partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
>the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after
>installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I
>can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my Notes databases
>from Linux.  So how risky is this?
>
>Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone
>know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under Windows
>2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried about what
>might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.
>
>I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone can give me.  There's just no way I can
>stand going back to using anything but Linux for my daily work.
>

Why not just use FAT?  Windows2k supports it . . .

-- 
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data
Guess which has occurred.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Patched Micro$oft servers are secure today . . . but tomorrow is another story!

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Dan Podeanu]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001 Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

>
> So how risky is this?

Risky enough. I had to chkdsk once for half an hour after copying on an
NTFS 5. Of course, I'm not familiar with the internals of it.

>
> Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone
> know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under Windows
> NT?

As far as I know, it doesn't know about NTFS. I might be wrong though. Get
some Partition Magic that is bit wiser.

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[lk]

I have installed a Win2000 and you do not have to switch to NTFS. W2000
can be installed on a FAT32 partition. I have installed it on a FAT32
partition and hasn't caused me any problems.

You might wanna give it a try.

good luck,

/me

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001 Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:

> 
> 
> Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that it's
> still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.  This is important to me
> because it looks like I'll have to start using it next week.  My office laptop
> is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.  Of course, I hardly ever
> boot into Windows any more since installing a Linux partition last year.  But
> our corporate email standard forces me to use Lotus Notes, which I run under
> Wine.   The Notes executables and databases are installed on my Windows
> partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
> the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after
> installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I
> can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my Notes databases
> from Linux.  So how risky is this?
> 
> Also, I'll have to recreate my Linux partitions after the upgrade.  Does anyone
> know if FIPS can split a partition safely that was created under Windows
> 2000/NT?  It worked fine for Windows 98, but I'm a little worried about what
> might happen if I try to use it on an NTFS partition.
> 
> I'd appreciate any advice or help anyone can give me.  There's just no way I can
> stand going back to using anything but Linux for my daily work.
> 
> Wayne
> 
> 
> -
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> 

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Where does write support for NTFS stand at the moment?  I noticed that it's
> still marked "Dangerous" in the kernel configuration.  This is important to me
> because it looks like I'll have to start using it next week.  My office laptop
> is going to be "upgraded" from Windows 98 to 2000.  Of course, I hardly ever
> boot into Windows any more since installing a Linux partition last year.  But
> our corporate email standard forces me to use Lotus Notes, which I run under
> Wine.   The Notes executables and databases are installed on my Windows
> partition.  The upgrade, though, will involve wiping the hard drive, allocating
> the whole drive to a single NTFS partition, and reinstalling Notes after
> installing Windows 2000 .  That means bye-bye FAT32 partition and hello NTFS.  I
> can't mount it read-only because I'll still have to update my Notes databases
> from Linux.  So how risky is this?

You need to update notes databases. Fine. Why not 
cp -a /ntfs/lotus.databases /usr and only ever update them on ext2?

Granted, you will not be able to use lotus notes under w2000. Does it
matter?
								Pavel
-- 
I'm pavel@ucw.cz. "In my country we have almost anarchy and I don't care."
Panos Katsaloulis describing me w.r.t. patents at discuss@linmodems.org

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[Wayne.Brown]

Thanks to all who offered suggestions, both on the list and privately.  Rather
than answer them all individually, I'm going to respond in this one message.

Unfortunately the upgrade is not going to be done by me, but by our PC support
team.  Our laptops originally were set up with two FAT32 partitions:  a small
one for Win98 and applications, and a large one for data files.  I used FIPS to
carve off most of the large one for a swap partition and an ext2 partition.
Now, because of the larger space requirements of Win2000, they're going to wipe
out everything on the drives and start from scratch.  They'll be doing all our
laptops in a short period of time, and want to do all of them the same way.

>From everything I've been told here, it sounds like my best bet is to try and
talk them into replacing the two FAT32 partitions (which are contiguous) with
one big one and leave my Linux partitions alone.  That way I won't have to deal
with NTFS at all.  Fortunately, one of the PC support guys ought to be
sympathetic; he runs Linux at home and has asked me for advice in getting it set
up on his laptop, too.  I'll see if I can talk him into doing my machine
differently from the others.  I have to be careful, though; my Linux use at work
is tolerated, but not (yet) encouraged, and I don't want to rock the boat too
much.

Thanks again to everyone.

Wayne

Re: Current status of NTFS support

[mirabilos]

> Thanks to all who offered suggestions, both on the list and privately.
Rather
> than answer them all individually, I'm going to respond in this one
message.
>
> Unfortunately the upgrade is not going to be done by me, but by our PC
support
> team.  Our laptops originally were set up with two FAT32 partitions:
a small
> one for Win98 and applications, and a large one for data files.  I
used FIPS to
> carve off most of the large one for a swap partition and an ext2
partition.
> Now, because of the larger space requirements of Win2000, they're
going to wipe
> out everything on the drives and start from scratch.  They'll be doing
all our
> laptops in a short period of time, and want to do all of them the same
way.
>
> >From everything I've been told here, it sounds like my best bet is to
try and
> talk them into replacing the two FAT32 partitions (which are
contiguous) with
> one big one and leave my Linux partitions alone.  That way I won't
have to deal
> with NTFS at all.  Fortunately, one of the PC support guys ought to be
> sympathetic; he runs Linux at home and has asked me for advice in
getting it set
> up on his laptop, too.  I'll see if I can talk him into doing my
machine
> differently from the others.  I have to be careful, though; my Linux
use at work
> is tolerated, but not (yet) encouraged, and I don't want to rock the
boat too
> much.
>
> Thanks again to everyone.
>
> Wayne

I would, if it goes all wrong, just copy all the stuff from NTFS over
network
to your home PC (linux boot floppy, NTFS r/o mount), use a windoze boot
floppy
to create FAT32 partitions, get a FAT32 NT boot sector from somewhere
(or use
the Recovery Console which I find great) and copy it back over network.
This should run without any serious problems.

-mirabilos