Accessing NTFS under Red Hat 8

By MPH
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MPH

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I've decided to try linux. I have a computer with single hard disk of 40 GB capacity. The "first 30 GB" are used by Windows XP Pro (NTFS file system) and I had successfuly installed Red Hat 8 on the remaining 10 GB of unallocated space. :D Because of my lack of linux knowledge I didn't install a boot loader (Grub or Lilo), but use boot disk to run linux.

Can someone explain me how can I access my files stored on my Windows XP partition?

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slack

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It's really unfortunate there is no write support yet, it's a pain for me to have access to all my files to raed, but not update, etcetera. Like my MP3s are on my windows drive, I can listen to them in Linux, but I can't download new ones.

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DTR

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It's really unfortunate there is no write support yet, it's a pain for me to have access to all my files to raed, but not update, etcetera. Like my MP3s are on my windows drive, I can listen to them in Linux, but I can't download new ones.

The best solution is to make "an output disk" - vfat (fat32).

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Grand Master

neowin_hipster

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There is "write" support in the 2.5.* kernel but it says immediately after to use an error correction application and then to reboot and run chkdsk in windows. Any one know why no one has written a wrapper for the windows dll?

I wonder if it will be the same story with Yukon file system. :(

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Grand Master

kjordan2001

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I just wonder why write support isn't 100% yet. The same NTFS system has been out for 2 years. Is it that hard to get Linux to write to NTFS? I suppose the permissions that exist on NTFS might pose a problem, but if you don't do permissions, it shouldn't be all that hard right?

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warr

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I think due to the security permissions, some encryptions, etc...

it is hard, due to *some * reason. no war here.

well, good enough. you never get support from M$ that their windows support Linux file system.

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MPH

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Thanks for the link Prasanth. I can now access my NTFS partition.

But now have another question: What about FAT32? Since Red Hat 8 can only read NTFS partitition, I would like to repartition my hard disk with Partition Magic 8 and create a small FAT32 partition and use to exchange data between Windows XP and Red Hat? I was told to type the command "cat /proc/filesystems" in terminal to see what file system are currently supported and it seems that Red Hat doesn't support FAT32 too. Any ideas???

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Grand Master

Prasanth

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Thanks for the link Prasanth. I can now access my NTFS partition.

But now have another question: What about FAT32? Since Red Hat 8 can only read NTFS partitition, I would like to repartition my hard disk with Partition Magic 8 and create a small FAT32 partition and use to exchange data between Windows XP and Red Hat? I was told to type the command "cat /proc/filesystems" in terminal to see what file system are currently supported and it seems that Red Hat doesn't support FAT32 too. Any ideas???

No redhat does support fat32

use this command to mount your fat32 drives

mount -t vfat /dev/hdan /mnt/fat

where n may vary and /mnt/fat is a folder of your choise.

To automount at startup edit /etc/fstab

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Vlad

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There is "write" support in the 2.5.* kernel but it says immediately after to use an error correction application and then to reboot and run chkdsk in windows. Any one know why no one has written a wrapper for the windows dll?

I wonder if it will be the same story with Yukon file system. :(

...you seriously think you can simply write a "wrapper" for a windows dll and it'll run problem free on linux? Don't you think if it was that easy they would have it done by now? Needless to say you don't understand much about the inner workings of operating systems or programming.

NTFS doesn't come in the form of a DLL. It comes in the form of a NT kernel module (ntfs.sys), and can't simply be "ported" to linux. It must be reverse engineered (e.g. what the linux-ntfs team is doing) and natively implemented for a variety of reasons. Write support is no where near as simple as you people think. A file isn't just "written to disk". There are several other things that must be taken into consideration when writing data to an NTFS disk (such as the MFT). Reverse engineering a journalized file system is *extremely slow and tedious work*. The fact they've come as far as they have without financial support is pretty amazing.

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Grand Master

kjordan2001

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There is "write" support in the 2.5.* kernel but it says immediately after to use an error correction application and then to reboot and run chkdsk in windows. Any one know why no one has written a wrapper for the windows dll?

I wonder if it will be the same story with Yukon file system. :(

...you seriously think you can simply write a "wrapper" for a windows dll and it'll run problem free on linux? Don't you think if it was that easy they would have it done by now? Needless to say you don't understand much about the inner workings of operating systems or programming.

NTFS doesn't come in the form of a DLL. It comes in the form of a NT kernel module (ntfs.sys), and can't simply be "ported" to linux. It must be reverse engineered (e.g. what the linux-ntfs team is doing) and natively implemented for a variety of reasons. Write support is no where near as simple as you people think. A file isn't just "written to disk". There are several other things that must be taken into consideration when writing data to an NTFS disk (such as the MFT). Reverse engineering a journalized file system is *extremely slow and tedious work*. The fact they've come as far as they have without financial support is pretty amazing.

I agree. Too bad fat32 is the only common partition windows and linux can share right now. And since fat32 has so many size limitations and issues, NTFS is the only probable median point. Although there are programs that can read/write on Linux partitions for you, they aren't a good solution for every day work.

[EDIT] Maybe not...found this: http://www.penguin.cz/~mhi/fs/Filesystems-...tems-HOWTO.html

Does anyone know if ext2fsnt is a viable solution? Link from there seems to be broken. But has anyone experimented with this? Is read-write support to ext2 100% workable? Seems to me that using Linux partitions in both Linux and Windows for a common filesystem seems more easily done than working around NTFS's complicated journaling system.

Edited by kjordan2001
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Rising Star

Dudydoo

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Also FYI ... when mounting fat32 drives using the fstab in RedHat, in my experience to be able to write to the drive you must add the 'uids' and 'gids' to the line in the following form:

/dev/hdx /mnt/windows vfat defaults, uid=500, gid=500 0 0

where x is your hdd fat32 partition number

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Vlad

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Does anyone know if ext2fsnt is a viable solution?  Link from there seems to be broken.  But has anyone experimented with this?  Is read-write support to ext2 100% workable?  Seems to me that using Linux partitions in both Linux and Windows for a common filesystem seems more easily done than working around NTFS's complicated journaling system.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/

I haven't tried it (I don't use ext2 at all) and since it's in "alpha" stage I doubt it will work very well (if at all). The link you posted is for a page that is more than 2 years old (in other words, outdated) so I wouldn't consider it very reliable, although some of its information remains true.

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