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NTFS Support For OpenBSD
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."
I've had NTFS 4/5 read access in Linux for at least a year now. How is this news?
NTFS read-write support would be a VERY big deal. It would be one less way that Microsoft isolates its customers.
I just recently formatted an NTFS partition to Fat32 because I was sick of not being able to write to it.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
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)
Buttsex.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
TCO is very similar to certain other numbers like 'processor speed' and 'benchmarks'.
Throw enough money around, and whatever report delivered you will tell you anything you want to hear.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a mere fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Why does openbsd exist again? Oh yeah, because Theo couldn't get his sparc patches accepted by the port maintainer. It's really odd that Theo has those emails up on his web site; they're not particularly flattering.
NTFS is a modern, mature, stable, fully journalled file system. It's got POSIX compliance, 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? Did you know it's got a change journal? Did you know it can encrypt and decrypt files on the fly for instant access? NTFS pushes security, and part of security is security through obscurity. No one can boot Knoppix and overwrite your SAM - they can format the drive, but they can't CHANGE your system (presuming then, that you could always restore your data).
Anyway, leave it to Slashdot to find some jerk who says NTFS is crap because it's a Microsoft product.
I'm not saying NTFS is the end all of file systems, but don't trash it. It's a very nice product, and, unlike reiser, ext3, and UFS2, it's proven and widely deployed.
More on NTFS
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 from netBSD. So read/write support isnt far off
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.
It's depressing when the only computer in the house that needs a fsck on power failure is the OpenBSD one.
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.
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, DFS or whatever. Those are the ones you need. A good and free implementation of NFS for NT might be nice, or Samba keeping up with ever changing Windows fileservers. For real use you need a directory service across platforms as well (NIS+ on windows, active directory on UNIX).
OpenBSD does NOT NEED a journaling fs. It already has the insanely stable UFS with soft-updates. Read up on soft-updates, compile it into your kernel, and then mount your disks with soft-updates enabled (read up on mount(8)).
Well it's true that Theo speaks his mind, and that he's a great programmer.
But he's so abusive I would not work with or keep him as a friend for all the money in the world.
He frequently goes off half cocked if anyone has a slightly different viewpoint, or God forbid, has not read All he has written. This no doubt is the real reason behind ARPA cutting his funds. He pissed off the wrong person with usual four letter panache. Which is also the real reason he "left" and started OpenBSD.
This garbage about speaking his mind is nothing but yes men justifying for his horrid manners. Stop being so afraid whenever someone disagrees with him! He's obviously a big boy and can fend for himself.
If anything tell him to take a walk around the block before replying and creating yet another degrading impression of the man behind an otherwise fantastic OS. Talk about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde!
Displaying such bad manners is not something that should be defended. Attacking people with four letter words because they kindly DISAGREED is not akin to greatness. All you do is make it more right in his mind to be abusive. True greatness is the ability to love someone in spite of...
[N.B.: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's w