Mounting ext2 Partitions From Windows?

vedge asks: "Is there any serious project for software that will let you mount a Linux ext2 partition from MS-Windows 95 or NT? I saw one here but it is now unmaintained and doesn't even work on my machine. "

Comments

Re:Samba?

[Stephen]

I assume it's because it's a dual-boot machine. (Although in that case, I don't know why it's not an option to get Linux to mount the Windows partition instead).

explore2fs

[cha0s]

try this. there are a few other nifty bits and pieces there too..

Samba is the way to go

[dlc]

I struggled with this for a while as well, and I realized that, all things considered, Samba is definitely the way to go. I ended up setting up a dedicated Linux box, running Samba and having it authenticate against the NT domain in which all the Windows boxen lived, and kept tons of data on the Linux box. The windows users never knew that they weren't talking to an NT box, and I got all the advantages of using Linux.

The advantages are (quickly):

• stability
• you can use any unix filesystem on the back end, since the Windows box communicates with it via SMB, and not through direct file access
• it doesn't have to run on Linux; you can use a Solaris box, for example (samba is developed on Solaris and Irix, not Linux) and this is also transparent to the Windows users
• because SMB is a network protocol, and not a kernel driver, you can share the same disk via several methods simultaneously: to Windows boxen via SMB, to *nix via NFS, to Macs using Netatalk, and, of course, you can ssh in to the box and access the files through the filesystem in the normal fashion.

Disadvantages:

• you need to have an extra box on the network (might be a problem if you have limited address space or physical space, like at your house)
• there are Windows boxen on your network (not a samba problem per se).

Cthulhu for President!