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."

Comments

NTFS support would help everyone.

[Futurepower(R)]

NTFS read-write support would be a VERY big deal. It would be one less way that Microsoft isolates its customers.

Re:NTFS support would help everyone.

[evilviper]

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 of 32GB, or to use a Microsoft-only filesystem like NTFS. I had hoped this would lead some Windows programmer to write a UFS driver for Windows, but instead it looks like it'll be the same old thing... Microsoft creating utter crap, and everyone imitating them, just to be compatible.

Re:ho hum...

[eht]

Well if you're going to say that, I've had NTFS 4/5 read/write support in Windows 2000 for about 3 years(NT4 sp6a has read/write support for NTFS 5 also), so I guess that makes Windows 2000 and NT4 at least 3 times better than Linux.

read only?

[Drakon]

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)

Re:read only?

[evilviper]

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.

Re:just use netbsd already

[TheRaven64]

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.

No. That may have been why OpenBSD was created (hey, we've all got egos, right?) but if that were the only reason it would not have existed for very long. OpenBSD concentrates totally on security, at the expense of adding flashy features, resulting in a very secure OS.

To 90% of us, this is entirely pointless, since something like Linux (or even windows) is 'secure enough', but to those who actually have serious security needs OpenBSD is a godsend. By the same token NetBSD is pointless, since everyone uses x86, right? The 'One Size Fits All' OS is a myth.

NTFS is hardly crap.

[sethadam1]

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

Re:NTFS is hardly crap.

[evilviper]

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.

Re:NTFS is hardly crap.

[irgu]

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 surveys. They are using different filesystems (ext2, ext3, jfs, reiserfs, xfs).

What number is bigger 200+ million or 10- million? So after all who is spreading FUD? Please try to get your facts right and not to make Linux users look completely ignorants.

Re:NTFS is hardly crap.

[irgu]

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 system... The filesystem doesn't do the encryption, the software on top of the filesystem does.

Check the NTFS documentation. Encryption is part of the filesystem.

Saying OSes other than Windows don't typically have reasonably transparent file encryption has nothing to do with the filesystem itself.

I never told this. Check out again what I wrote.

Besides, I would never talk about a distro "out of the box". It's a horrible baseline to use. There are many things that distros don't do "out of the box" that are very easy for an admin to do.

Majority of the computer users aren't admins.

I gave much more detailed info in my reply to his vague assertions, so how does that make you think he knows what he's talking about, and I don't? The only obvious answer is that you promote NTFS yourself, and since he agrees with your opinions, that *must* mean he is knowledgable ...

If I were to promote a filesystem then that wouldn't be NTFS. But NTFS is better, much more feature rich then most of the Unix ones, you like it or or not (personally I don't care much). But let's see what sethadam1 wrote: "NTFS is a modern, mature, stable, fully journalled file system".

Modern: definitely, at least compared to most Unix filesystems. It support most or all of their features *plus* compression, encryption, all power of 2 block sizes between 512 and 64 KB, nanosec timestamps, undelete on filesystem level, file forks, ACL's, extended attributes, UTF-8, indexing, etc.

Mature: one should look through its evolution how much it improved over the last 10 years

Stable: how would it work otherwise for several hundred million users?

Fully journalled: that's not true. Only metadata is journaled.

hardly.

[sethadam1]

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.