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Security Operating Systems BSD

NTFS Support For OpenBSD 65

Posted by timothy from the sacred-and-profane dept.
Dan writes "Julien Bordet has ported code from NetBSD to support NTFS4 and NTFS5 in OpenBSD-current. He has heavily tested read accesses to his Windows 2000 partition, and that has worked fine. Julien says that there is an existing port, but his port is new and adds NTFS5 support."
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NTFS Support For OpenBSD More

NTFS Support For OpenBSD

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  • NTFS support would help everyone. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @12:18AM (#5951930) Homepage
    NTFS read-write support would be a VERY big deal. It would be one less way that Microsoft isolates its customers.
    • No, you've got that backwards. Having UFS support on Windows would be one less way for Microsoft to lock-in their customers. This way just means that more people are likely to use NTFS on their removable disks, rather than some better format, like UFS.

      UFS, AFAIK, is supported by every-reasonably-popular-operating-system-on-the- p lanet, except Windows.

      One good thing about our current point in time is that Windows users have to choose between the widely compatible FAT32, with it's maximum filesystem size

      • NTFS is hardly crap. (Score:3, Informative)

        by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) *
        NTFS is a modern, mature, stable, fully journalled [microsoft.com] file system. It's got POSIX compliance [microsoft.com], and it's got room built in for improvement. It also handles sparse files very nicely. In fact, even Windows NT 4 can use NTFS 3.1 (aka NTFS5) when upgraded to SP4 (ntfs.sys is replaced).

        Few people really know what they're talking about when they discuss NTFS. Did you know it supports hard linking [microsoft.com]? Did you know it's got a change journal? Did you know it can encrypt and decrypt [microsoft.com] files on the fly for instant acces
        • They may not be able to change your system by booting Knoppix, but they can by booting Windows XP from CD. There was a semi-recent NTBugtraq thread on the topic...

          (please note that I'm not bashing NTFS, but it's not the panacea Microsoft would like you to think it is :)

          • You're right, but that's not a problem with NTFS. That's a problem with XP, of which there are MANY.

            I agree, NTFS isn't by any stretch a panacea, but it is worthy of some praise - certainly as much as the current iterations of reiserfs and ext3.

        • Re:NTFS is hardly crap. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @11:47PM (#5960976) Journal
          NTFS is a modern, mature, stable, fully journalled file system.

          All technically true, but that's the effect if you are so incredibly vague.

          NTFS is slow... very slow when compared to other "modern" filesystems. It is a journaled fs, yet a chkdsk takes quite a long time.

          Few people really know what they're talking about when they discuss NTFS.

          Can't speak for those "few people", but I do know what I'm talking about.

          Did you know it supports hard linking

          Yes, it has a very nasty and clumsy method that allows it to create links.

          Did you know it can encrypt and decrypt files on the fly for instant access?

          Yes I did, but just about every filesystem on the planet is decent enough that encryption can be layered on-top of it without any problem.

          No one can boot Knoppix and overwrite your SAM

          Would you like to bet on that??? Up to about Windows 2000 SP2, I have booted up with a Linux disc, changed the Admin password, edited the registry, etc. Besides that, even if Microsoft had done their job adequately (which they haven't), the value of that feature is questionable. Also note that other OSes have better forms of that feature, that aren't problematic, and don't have the limitations.

          Anyway, leave it to Slashdot to find some jerk who says NTFS is crap because it's a Microsoft product.

          The wording of most of your post sounds like it was pulled directly from a press release ("NTFS is a modern, mature, stable, fully journalled file system. It's got POSIX compliance, and it's got room built in for improvement."), and you say I'm biased? Give me a break. It sounds like you are in support of NTFS just BECAUSE it is a Microsoft product.

          I call shenagins on you.

          • NTFS is slow... very slow when compared to other "modern" filesystems. It is a journaled fs, yet a chkdsk takes quite a long time.

            You mix apple with orange, and journaling with fsck. A full fsck is slow on all filesystem. Moreover chkdsk (full fsck) was significantly improved on XP and Win2003.

            The slowness of NTFS is because of the inefficient Windows implementation of the NTFS *driver*. Just look at how it allocates clusters if there are multiply write sessions. Insane. Regularly running the built-in

            • You mix apple with orange, and journaling with fsck. A full fsck is slow on all filesystem.

              Yes, an FSCK is slow on any filesystem... However, modern journaled filesystem don't require a fsck at all, unlike NTFS, which can often have minor filesystem corrpution if chkdsk isn't used... Which is why Windows automatically runs it everytime there has been sudden shutdown.

              Hey, what's the point of journaling if you are just going to run chkdsk/fsck everytime, anyhow?

              The slowness of NTFS [...] Regularly runni

              • Re:NTFS is hardly crap. (Score:2, Interesting)

                by irgu ( 673471 )

                Hey, what's the point of journaling if you are just going to run chkdsk/fsck everytime, anyhow?

                First good point. And apparently the only one.

                Well, if you are forced to defrag it all the time, that *really* ruins your performance, which defeats the point.

                I'm not forced because I don't use NTFS :P But I can't see what's the big deal running it once a day in the background automatically. People do it and they are happy with it. And others whining.

                Now you are mixing up the filesystem and the operating s

              • I've had my Win2000 boxes shut off on occasion. It doesn't run chkdsk when I turn it back on. Not even in the background, because the HD LED is right in front me.

                Maybe you have set that way, but I know I haven't changed in default settings in that regard.

                I can't stand you people that purposely lie and distort the truth in an attempt to bolster your argument.
                • I've had my Win2000 boxes shut off on occasion. It doesn't run chkdsk when I turn it back on.

                  It certainly does run chkdsk after an "improper shutdown", and not in the background either.

                  I can't stand you people that purposely lie and distort the truth in an attempt to bolster your argument.

                  I can't stand you people that purposely distort the truth in an attempt to troll on veb forums.
                  • I invite you over to prove otherwise. I'll even set you up a default install. For your reference, I'm running "Microsoft Windows 2000, 5.00.2195, Service Pack 3" obtained through MSDN.
              • Hey, what's the point of journaling if you are just going to run chkdsk/fsck everytime, anyhow?

                If it needs a chkdsk everytime the OS goes down, that leads me to to question whether it's proper to describe it as a journaling filesystem. At best, it sounds like it's the worst implementation of a journaling filesystem in the entire industry.

                'nuff said.

            • What main distro ships out of the box transparent per file, directory or volume level encryption? None.

              What main distro ships with many out of the box remotely-exploitable holes? Or increadibly broken email clients? A strong sys admin is need for your Windows boxes just as much, if not more so, than UNIX-ish boxes. Of the three servers running in my office the Windows box needs to be rebooted about once a month; I use the uptime of the OpenBSD boxes to measure when the last power outage was.

              • What main distro ships out of the box transparent per file, directory or volume level encryption? None.

                What main distro ships with many out of the box remotely-exploitable holes? Or increadibly broken email clients? A strong sys admin is need for your Windows boxes just as much, if not more so, than UNIX-ish boxes. Of the three servers running in my office the Windows box needs to be rebooted about once a month; I use the uptime of the OpenBSD boxes to measure when the last power outage was.

                The topic

        • > unlike reiser, ext3, and UFS2, it's proven and widely deployed...

          --Oh, be quiet. I bet there are more systems out there running reiserfs and ext3 than ntfs. I can say for a fact that you are spreading FUD about reiserfs - SuSE has it as their default filesystem, I use it everywhere myself, and have never had a problem with it.

          • Re:NTFS is hardly crap. (Score:2, Insightful)

            by irgu ( 673471 )

            unlike reiser, ext3, and UFS2, it's proven and widely deployed...

            --Oh, be quiet. I bet there are more systems out there running reiserfs and ext3 than ntfs. I can say for a fact that you are spreading FUD

            Let's see, over 30% of OS's are XP. Most with NTFS. Forget now for W2k and older NT's that have also NTFS as default. That's about 200-300 million computers using minimum one NTFS.

            There are couple of millions Linux user, lets say max 10 million that's an overestimate based on most reasonable survey

            • --Where did you get those numbers for XP? Oh that's right, you pulled them out of your ass.

              --You SERIOUSLY underestimate the number of Linux users out there. And you have nothing to back up your claims. Go away, troll.

              • Where did you get those numbers for XP?

                FWIW, I follow the evolution of Mozilla's market share in Google Zeitgeist [google.com] and they also show a pie chart of the different operating systems used to access Google.

                • Windows 98 .... 34%
                • Windows XP .... 31%
                • Windows 2000 .. 21%
                • Windows NT .... 4%
                • Windows 95 .... 2%
                • Mac ........... 3%
                • Linux ......... 1%
                • Other ......... 4%

              • --Where did you get those numbers for XP? Oh that's right, you pulled them out of your ass.

                No, I work in the computing industry so I follow the happenings even unvoluntarily. There are a bunch of sources of information, Microsoft press announced [microsoft.com] 67 million XP copies sold on 17 October 2002, after one year XP was released. I remember announcements on 90 millions some months ago, so today they should be around 100 million. These are the legal copies. BSA and other sources say 2-4 more times used with the i

                • Many Linux users don't even register at Linux Counter.

                  I never did, until just now. If anything, the Linux Counter graph would be an underestimate because the only people it shows are those who both a)knew about it, and b)cared enough to register.
                  • Many Linux users don't even register at Linux Counter. I never did, until just now. If anything, the Linux Counter graph would be an underestimate because the only people it shows are those who both a)knew about it, and b)cared enough to register.
                    The 14 millions Linux users on the graph (or 18 millions on the home page) is an estimate. The number of registered users are under 120 thousands as of today.
                • Oh, and according to Linux Counter, there are 18 million users estimated.

          • hardly. (Score:3, Informative)

            by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) *
            I'll have to do some research. I don't believe for one second that there are more ext3 or resier deployments that NTFS. NTFS has been around since at least 1996 or earlier - virtually every Windows server runs it.

            I bet most Linux servers still use ext2. FreeBSD uses UFS. Novell uses NWFS. AIX uses JFS and IRIX uses XFS. reiser and ext3 are still babies comparitively.
        • Except that the security in NTFS can be bypassed by placing to the drive in a Win98 machine and installing a copy of NTFS for 98 (it's a commercial NTFS driver for 98). You can then read any directory or file, whatever its permissions.

          • Except that the security in NTFS can be bypassed by placing to the drive in a Win98 machine and installing a copy of NTFS for 98 (it's a commercial NTFS driver for 98). You can then read any directory or file, whatever its permissions.

            The same true for all main Linux/Unix filesystems. E.g. there are ext2 drivers for Windows.

            However if you use the built in encryption feature of NTFS then you can't read the files. You can't do the same with the main Linux/Unix filesystems because none of them supports enc

      • One good thing about our current point in time is that Windows users have to choose between the widely compatible FAT32, with it's maximum filesystem size of 32GB, or to use a Microsoft-only filesystem like NTFS.

        According to Microsoft, FAT32 drives can be up to ~8TB, however the provided formatting utility can only format up to 32GB (Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 184006 [microsoft.com]. I recall reading that the Win ME boot disk can format larger partitions (because I have about 40GB I want to format on here to be a p

  • I just recently formatted an NTFS partition to Fat32 because I was sick of not being able to write to it.

  • read only? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Drakon ( 414580 ) on Wednesday May 14, 2003 @01:05AM (#5952131) Journal
    I don't see any references to writing.

    I don't tihnk anyone can write to these damn things...

    *shrug* basically, I don't see any reason to run a secure OS (openbsd) on the same machine as -blech- windows, so this has very little use (ie, moving a drive to another machine when the original machine can't read it, etc)
    • From the FreeBSD version -- mount_ntfs(8):


      WRITING
      There is limited writing ability. Limitations: file must be nonresident
      and must not contain any sparces (uninitialized areas); compressed files
      are also not supported.

    • Re:read only? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      I don't see any references to writing.

      Then why don't you try reading the article? You'd learn much more that way.

      Yes, it says there is limited write support, mainly without file creation or deletion support. Hey, it's better than nothing.

      Personally, I would prefer not having NTFS support at all... It just encourages everyone to use Microsoft's filesystems.
      • Personally, I would prefer not having NTFS support at all... It just encourages everyone to use Microsoft's filesystems.

        Do you really think so? How many people run Linux/*BSD on a FAT32 FS? On the other hand, how many people moved from Win9x to Linux/*BSD and kept their documents on a FAT32 partition while they were migrating so that they could move gradually?

        People will use UFS instead of NTFS because it is a more logical choice (and because it's the default). People who run XP would be able to move

        • How many people run Linux/*BSD on a FAT32 FS?

          You're looking at things from a very weird angle. Sure, nobody uses FAT filesystems for their main Unix filesystem, but they definately use them for any removable devices.

          On the other hand, how many people moved from Win9x to Linux/*BSD and kept their documents on a FAT32 partition while they were migrating so that they could move gradually?

          I would love to move my digital camera from Win9x to BSD, but since it only supports FAT, I'm out of luck there... I h

          • Everyone uses FAT on them so they will work under Windows, but it's a very crappy filesystem, not supported on all OSes, and Windows is the only platform that has the tools to work with FAT filesystems properly (Defrag, Chkdsk, etc).

            What OS doesn't support FAT? I'm pretty sure even IOS on some routers and SRM on Alphas reads FAT floppies for firmware updates.

            dosfsck (8) - check and repair MS-DOS file systems

            I don't see a defrag util, but that's not a show stopper IMO.

            The ONLY reason UFS isn

            • So why don't someone write a Windows driver for UFS? ... Maybe it's because there's so many variants

              I think the main reason is that writing a file system device driver for Windows is just so difficult. There are hundreds of potential applications for a file system driver besides the obvious. e.g. what about a Win32 equivalent of /proc, or a file system inside a regular file, etc?

              If writing NT file system drivers was reasonably straightforward, there'd be a plethora of shareware examples knocking about, a
  • NTFS has been One of the most frustrating filesystems to get into read write mode....Linux kernels 2.4.21 has read write capability in it, however, in some circumstances its broken. Linux kernels 2.5.30 have working read write support in them. And the linux 2.6.x kernels promise stable, and fast read write support.

    So it quite frustrating, but it is slowly coming along. And once it is out for linux...I'm sure it will be in the BSD kernel quickly...in fact some of the techniques for NTFS read support came
  • It's about time OpenBSD supported a journaling filesystem. Any journaling filesystem. Even NTFS. Even though it's not read-write yet.

    It's depressing when the only computer in the house that needs a fsck on power failure is the OpenBSD one.

  • Read/(write) access to none native filesystems such as NTFS is only relevant for dual boot systems, where it may be nice to access your NTFS partition while booted into *BSD or Linux.

    But "real" systems are no dual boot systems. So you don't need it. Hardly find NTFS on floppies or CD-R or on tape. OK maybe for a hotswappable (scsi) harddisk it might have a use, but that is the only serious thing I can think of.

    All other interoperability between filesystems goes via network filesystems, be it SMB, NFS, AFS

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