Knoppix Variant Offers Full NTFS Write Support

what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by BigGerman · 2004-01-10 07:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

..is how it can offer better hardware detection and often better features than other, "commercial" Linux distros?
Anyone has internal information on how Knoppix is developed and maintained?

Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by Nasarius · 2004-01-10 07:54 · Score: 1

It doesn't have better hardware detection. Mandrake especially has excellent automatic hardware configuration, and SuSE and Red Hat/Fedora are also very good.

--
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by jonadab · 2004-01-10 08:52 · Score: 1

> how it can offer better hardware detection and often better features than
> other, "commercial" Linux distros?

I've found the hardware detection in Knoppix to be almost exactly on par with
Mandrake -- what works with one works with the other. As far as "better
features", the main feature I like in Knoppix is the ability to boot from
CD-ROM :-) but apart from that, what features do you mean, that are not in
other distros?

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by Spoing · 2004-01-10 09:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Knoppix uses the Kudzu libs to do hardware detection; the same as Red Hat Linux and Fedora.

--
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by mabhatter654 · 2004-01-10 10:03 · Score: 1

It just works! That's the kicker. Sure, it's probably no better than the current crop of pay-for distros, but that's the point. The pay-for distros don't have much BETTER hardware detection either...and knoppix is based on Debian sources + a little tweaking that they publish back under GPL. Oh yeah, it's not "commercial"...that's the big deal!!!
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by pairo · 2004-01-10 14:08 · Score: 1

Most of the 'current crop of pay-for distros' are also based on Debian (Lindows, Libranet and Xandros are the biggest three I know of).
That being said, the biggest advantage of Knoppix, imho anyway, isn't that it's GPL, but that I can boot it off the CD, making it a very useful tool when trying to revive dead machines.
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by mabhatter654 · 2004-01-11 04:39 · Score: 1

I was getting at "it's free" in addition to being nearly as good as "commercial" distros..
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 07:13 · Score: 0

Knoppix uses the Kudzu libs to do hardware detection; the same as Red Hat Linux and Fedora.

But I think the point that fools people is that it does it on boot-up instead of at install time, which looks more impressive.
Re:what I still don't understand sbout Knoppix... by FedeTXF · 2004-01-12 00:28 · Score: 1

I ran Knoppix at home and I got a kernel panic while loading the X server. That didn't happen at work, or at home with Redhat 8 and 9.

what about linux 2.6 by MoOsEb0y · 2004-01-10 07:51 · Score: 1

Doesn't the kernel now support this natively?

Re:what about linux 2.6 by ignatus · 2004-01-10 08:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

nopes, just "partially" as in: "allmost nothing"
The new driver, introduced in 2.5.11, has some write code, but it's very limited. The driver can overwrite existing files, but it cannot change the length, add new or delete existing files.
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html#3 .2

--
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Legality? by duffbeer703 · 2004-01-10 07:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

If I'm skimming the Captive homepage to quickly, but it seems to me like Captive is using Microsoft DLL's to read/write NTFS filesystems.

Seems to me like that would or will violate the Microsoft EULA and leave Knoppix users open to problems if MS changes parts of these DLLs in subsequent service packs or releases.

--
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK

Re:Legality? by Nasarius · 2004-01-10 07:59 · Score: 5, Informative

It's not a DLL, but yeah, it's Microsoft's driver. The trick is that Knoppix isn't distributing this file, but rather searching your Windows partition for it.

--
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Re:Legality? by duffbeer703 · 2004-01-10 08:03 · Score: 1

So Knoppix isn't violating the EULA, the user is by running Knoppix?

Seems like a bad idea to me.

--
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:Legality? by HolyCoitus · 2004-01-10 08:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

It would seem unlikely that the EULA would have something in it saying that you are only allowed to use those drivers with the single operating system they came with.... Even if it did, I really doubt that would be completely enforceable? I mean, it isn't reasonable to assume that on the same computer, you can't use those drivers from an operating system that you own to access a hard drive that you own?

--
That's scary.
Re:Legality? by kelnos · 2004-01-10 11:04 · Score: 1

funny, that's the same thing people say about watching their legally bought dvds on linux, but (though it hasn't been tested in court iirc) it is technically illegal to do so.

not saying i don't totally agree with you; i'm just playing devil's advocate.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Re:Legality? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-10 11:15 · Score: 0

It's not technically illegal to watch the DVDs on Linux. It's technically illegal to distribute a circumvention device.
Re:Legality? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-10 13:21 · Score: 0

but don't worry, it's only techinically illegal under the auspices of present western national governments. Which we now regard as illegitimate.
Re:Legality? by duffbeer703 · 2004-01-10 13:48 · Score: 1

Enforceable or not, who has the resources to go toe to tow with MS legal.

--
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:Legality? by hypnagogue · 2004-01-10 14:33 · Score: 2, Funny

Enforceable or not, who has the resources to go toe to tow with MS legal.

IBM.

What do I win?

--
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Re:Legality? by HolyCoitus · 2004-01-11 06:58 · Score: 1

You could also bring up the question, as to why would MS legal want all that bad press for something like that? If they target someone who can't defend themselves, there is a huge risk for it blowing up in their face. If they pick on someone who can defend themselves, they'll probably lose the case. That's a lose-lose situation for them, no matter who they target.

--
That's scary.
Re:Legality? by jdray · 2004-01-11 13:18 · Score: 2, Informative

IIRC, MS put some blarney in the latest Office licenses that said it was only legal to use Office on a Windows platform. One would assume that the Office for Mac licenses read differently, but anyone using WINE to run Office XP is (as I said, IIRC and IANAL) violating the license agreement.

--
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Re:Legality? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-12 01:31 · Score: 0

You sir, are an idiot.
Re:Legality? by bhtooefr · 2004-01-14 05:25 · Score: 1

Umm... it has been tested in a Norwegian court (and deemed legal), and you're thinking of watching their CSS-encrypted legally-bought DVDs, which may be illegal in the US (but not in Norway), thanks to the DMCA.
Re:Legality? by kelnos · 2004-01-14 17:50 · Score: 1

sorry, was i being US-centric? whoops. sorry, but norwegian court rulings don't really hold water here. and yes, i was referring to the fact that it is technically illegal in the US to decrypt a CSS-encrypted DVD using unlicensed hardware/software because of that awful DMCA thing.

am i US-centric? yes. that's where i live, that's where /. is based, and that's where most of /.'s readership lives. forgive me if i don't explicitly state that the information i present is not necessarily applicable outside the US, but that's just how it is. i'm lazy. deal.

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Re:Legality? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-15 07:49 · Score: 0

So now you're assuming that I don't live in the US, when you just don't notice the thing on US-CENTRIC SLASHDOT about DVD-Jon being cleared.

I'll rather wait for the full oo support by ignatus · 2004-01-10 07:55 · Score: 0

Since this basically just uses wine to emulate the native windows drivers for ntfs, i don't find this a major brake-through. Allthough this will be extremely usefull for the people having to cope with ntfs, i'd rather wait until the kernel supports it fully (there's allready a "partial" driver in the kernel 2.6).

But personally, i just stick to FAT32. It's the most easy solution if you need a windoze just once in a whilep

--
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-10 09:57 · Score: 0

most easy lol

easiest????
maybe?
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by mabhatter654 · 2004-01-10 10:09 · Score: 1

Due to DMCA and other wonderful stuff, you'll probably never see a native OSS driver for NTFS...it's an encrypted filesystem. AS for WHY...almost all PCs sold nowdays come with NTFS...the OEMs sell them that way. Short of asking a user to reformat their drive, you can't get fat32 on newer boxes...and Knoppix is aimed at users who don't want to/can't modify their windows install.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by jonadab · 2004-01-10 10:12 · Score: 2, Informative

> Allthough this will be extremely usefull for the people having to cope
> with ntfs, i'd rather wait until the kernel supports it fully (there's
> allready a "partial" driver in the kernel 2.6). But personally, i just
> stick to FAT32.

The usefulness of this is primarily geared toward situations where NTFS is
already extant (e.g., OEM installs of WinXP). In these scenerios, if you
want to multiboot and share data between the two OSes, use Knoppix as a
rescue system, or anything along those lines, you *need* read/write NTFS
support. You don't need this if you have your choice of filesystems,
because you can just use another filesystem, but if you are in a situation
where you need this, nothing else will do. So it's important. It's
especially important for Knoppix, which is often used as a rescue system;
now it can be used as a rescue system for NT/2K/XP, as well as for 9x/Me.

No, you wouldn't choose to use this on a new install when you have your choice
of filesystems. For that you'd pick Reiser or ext2/3 probably, or FAT for a
data partition in a multiboot scenerio (since that gives the best compatibility
and works with every major OS and most minor ones as well). But that's not the
intention of captive-ntfs. It's for working with existing filesystems.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by Earlybird · 2004-01-10 10:31 · Score: 1

Due to DMCA and other wonderful stuff, you'll probably never see a native OSS driver for NTFS...it's an encrypted filesystem.
NTFS is not an encrypted file system. Windows' layered file system architecture supports encryption, yes, but that's not quite the same thing.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by mcbridematt · 2004-01-10 20:33 · Score: 1

Not to mention the fact that Windows has some stupid approach to NTFS encryption. All you have to do to crack a NTFS encrypted file is just to access it with the Linux-NTFS driver.

M$ really needs to get their act up.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by ratpack91 · 2004-01-11 02:38 · Score: 1

Also NTFS is preferable over FAT because FAT has no concept of file ownership. On a FAT32 partition any user can delete and modify any file so security goes out the window if more than one person uses the computer. Its almost like running windows 98. This is the main reason why I still use NTFS for my winXP partion.
ntfs also supports bigger file sizes and better performance for bigger partitions along with fact that its a journaling file system like ext3 and reiser.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by mabhatter654 · 2004-01-11 04:37 · Score: 1

But do you think they'd tollerate full R/W support from Linux without trying to break it? That, or WinFS is going to be a different scheme alltogether just to stick it to OSS.
Remember Microsoft is a Corperation of the USA...linux hackers are just Citizens [or maybe even Foriegn citizens...the horror]
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by irgu · 2004-01-11 05:19 · Score: 1
- But do you think they'd tollerate full R/W support from Linux without trying to break it?
Breaking NTFS is part of the technology evolution. ext3 "broke" ext2, reiser4 "broke" reiserfs, etc. So why you can't mess your filesystem? Because everytime these changes happen the on-disk filesystem version, signatures are also incremented. Not doing so Microsoft would damage itself, for example by W2K, XP destroying Longhorn NTFS. If this version change is detected then no data harm is possible. The old, unmaintained NTFS driver didn't check the NTFS version so when W2K came out the NT4 driver destroyed the W2K NTFS. Kernel developers fixed this only much later on thus the damage was already done.
About WinFS: it's not a filesystem. It's a storage layer on top of NTFS.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 21:05 · Score: 0

Encryption in NTFS is handled using the standard PKI services. This means that you would still have to be able to login to the AD domain as the user in order to be able to decrypt their files.

aQazaQa
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by aonaran · 2004-01-12 02:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Here's an example when you might want to use Captive....
You do video editing, XP has some good tools, Linux has some good tools. Video editing is best done on a file system that can handle large files like EXT2/3, Reiser, or NTFS (FAT 32 has a 4GB maximum file size)
Since XP doesn't support any of the Linux filesystems in read/write mode (at full speed) even with opensource add-on drivers there are 2 options for a video editor who wants to use both paltforms.

#1 buy 2 computers and network them and pass the project back and forth over the network

#2 format a common drive in NTFS, put the project on that drive and dual boot between XP and Linux using Captive in Linux to access the Filesystem in read/write mode at full speed.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by jonadab · 2004-01-13 02:38 · Score: 1

> Also NTFS is preferable over FAT because FAT has no concept of file ownership.

This would only matter for situations with multiple users who don't trust one
another, which basically either means servers (where if you're using Windows
I feel sorry for you) or some kind of unusual desktop situation. I've seen
many, many Windows desktops, but they were all either used by one person or
were used by multiple people who all shared the same user account. I've not
yet seen anyone actually using the Windows multiuser stuff in real life. I'm
sure it happens, but it is not the typical situation.

And quite obviously the multiuser stuff is unimportant in a multiboot scenerio,
since that's invariably a computer used by one person, or else different people
use different OSes (e.g., the spouse uses Windows). Also, the other OS can
mount the NTFS partition (albeit perhaps in read-only mode, at least if you
don't want to screw things up -- until now), so security is already gone.

Frankly, even in a single-boot scenerio, a bootable removable drive pretty
much removes all security these days, what with Knoppix and tomsrootboot
and all those sorts of things. ISTR there's a floppy disk image out there
that's made for changing the passwords in the WindowsXP registry. If you
need real security, you frankly have to keep the user physically away from
the computer, or use an encrypted filesystem that requires key entry on boot.

> Its almost like running windows 98.

I believe that was the primary #1 selling point of Windows XP. If it *weren't*
almost like using Win98, it would have received about the same user response
as Windows 2000, i.e., "make it go away". After Win2000 flopped in the market
place (not flopped compared to NT4, but flopped in terms of being received by
consumers as the next version after Win98), Microsoft backpedaled their
no-more-versions-of-Win9x position, did some market research to find out
what differences regular people saw between the two OSes, released WinMe
(to tide over the OEMs who were carping about their position trying to sell
either Win2000, which people wouldn't buy, or Win98SE, which was officially
obsolete), and poured the results of that market research into WinXP. So
yeah, it's almost like Windows 98. If you squint. At the time, security was
not a major concern for most users. (It has in the time since become a more
significant concern. Yes, end users can be slow catching on to things.)

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:I'll rather wait for the full oo support by bhtooefr · 2004-01-14 05:27 · Score: 1

Last I checked, ext3 only broke support when a program designed to manipulate ext2 wanted to write.

Nope by Nasarius · 2004-01-10 07:56 · Score: 3, Informative

As always, NTFS read-only works fine, writing is very limited unless you want to corrupt your filesystem. Knoppix would be using an approach that uses Microsoft's ntfs.sys to handle writing. Of course, you need Windows installed (or at least a copy of ntfs.sys) for this to work.

--
LOAD "SIG",8,1

Re:Nope by Josh+Booth · 2004-01-10 08:10 · Score: 3, Informative

Well... I just downloaded 2.6.1 and the help note in menuconfig says that nobody has had any problem with the NTFS writing, since it is limited to not changing the file size or creating new files. This is different from earlier kernels which pretended that they knew how to write NTFS and would actually mess up your partition. It says they have no reports of corruption, though :-)
Re:Nope by xenocide2 · 2004-01-10 09:54 · Score: 1

Probably because nobody's stupid enough to try it and then tell the developers. You're welcome to do just that, of course.

--
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Re:Nope by TheLink · 2004-01-11 03:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

Just curious:

How well does NTFS read-only work?

Does it support > 2GB NTFS files on x86 machines?

If it does stuff like that reliably then I might consider using it for certain sort of backups. In many cases I won't be too bothered about permissions and the other stuff.
--
- Too many replies beneath your current threshold
Re:Nope by irc.goatse.cx+troll · 2004-01-11 10:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

I've got a 20gig ext2, 60gig ext3, and 20gig win2k3.

Debian reads all three fine.
Windows reads all three fine.

--
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Re:Nope by netsharc · 2004-01-11 11:59 · Score: 1

He said files bigger than 2 GB, not partitions. :)

--
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Re:Nope by vinsci · 2004-01-11 13:05 · Score: 1

No, really. We haven't had any corruption reports and people are actually using it.

--

Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Re:Nope by cyb97 · 2004-01-11 21:41 · Score: 1

and IIRC it's also limited to writing only on volumes created by win2k.
Re:Nope by cyb97 · 2004-01-11 21:47 · Score: 1

and slashcode just beautifully removed my less-than sign, so I ment to say writing only on volumes created by windows versions earlier than 2k.
Re:Nope by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 22:29 · Score: 0

< == & l t ;
(less the whitespace)
Re:Nope by bhtooefr · 2004-01-14 05:23 · Score: 1

How does Windows read the Linux partitions? Last I checked, Windows couldn't read those.
Re:Nope by irc.goatse.cx+troll · 2004-01-14 06:01 · Score: 1

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

Not native windows, but decently fast. My only problem is 1) need to 'net start ext2fsd' on boot (I'm sure there is probably a way to automate it, but I'm no windows admin). 2) Winamp5 seems to list my songs double when using the jump feature.
Its fast enough that I can watch high quality por^H^H^Hmovies off of it without lag or excess system load.

--
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Re:Nope by bryhhh · 2004-01-15 12:53 · Score: 1

Of course, you need Windows installed (or at least a copy of ntfs.sys) for this to work.

Which of course it would be. If the file wasn't there, what use would NTFS read or write be on the system anyway?
Re:Nope by revividus · 2004-01-16 06:44 · Score: 1

I think Windows will still run the autoexec.bat file on boot, if it exists. You could put that line in there. If not that, one of the .ini files should do.
What I'm saying is, I doubt it's very hard to automate -- a couple minutes of googling (that I haven't bothered with) would probably do it. Any of us who have to use Windows (at work or otherwise), may as well make it work (as much as possible) the way we want...

--
philcrissman.com.

Excuse me? by Quarters · 2004-01-10 08:12 · Score: 1

What is LinuxDefender and how can the best part of full read/write NTFS support be that it exists in Knoppix, which is then turned into this LinuxDefender thing?

I mean, realistically, wouldn't the best part of full read/write NTFS support be the fact that it exists?

Re:Excuse me? by Earlybird · 2004-01-10 10:27 · Score: 1

English is not the poster's native language. Yes, the wording doesn't make sense. Cut him some slack.
Re:Excuse me? by sami_potirca · 2004-01-12 05:29 · Score: 1

Well, among other things, it contains a antivirus, BitDefender, therefore can easily be used as a rescue-cd by those who got infected and their system does not work properly any-more.

Just my 2 euro-cents.

Using microsoft programs in Captive. by BrookHarty · 2004-01-10 08:24 · Score: 0, Redundant

Reading about how they support ntfs in Captive

It says they use ntfs.sys and even ntoskrnl.exe from your XP partition.

Wondering if there are legal problems with this.

Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by xutopia · 2004-01-10 08:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

obviously no. If someone has a valid XP licence they should be allowed to use it in any way they wish to and this includes the NTFS driver.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by jonadab · 2004-01-10 10:20 · Score: 5, Informative

> It says they use ntfs.sys and even ntoskrnl.exe from your XP partition.
> Wondering if there are legal problems with this.

One supposes that if you have an NTFS partition with these files on it, the
files are licensed for you to use and therefore legal. (If not, you have a
problem that goes beyond captive-ntfs.) Unless there is some specific
verbiage in the EULA that expressly prohibits use of the drivers when the
NT kernel isn't running, or some such restriction, I'm not sure what the
legal problem would be. I find it difficult to imagine that the MS legal
team would have dreamed up that kind of restriction, since it's not the sort
of thing they would expect people to do. What happens when the EULA is
revised is another matter, but this would have to get on the MS radar for
that to happen, which will take at least a year, then another six months or
so until the next update/revision cycle, and hopefully by then the native
read/write NTFS support in the 2.6 kernel will be of such quality as to make
the whole point moot.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by BlueLightning · 2004-01-10 11:04 · Score: 1

I think it's important to note that the issue with the current Linux kernel's NTFS support is its capabilities, not its quality. It can only write to a file without increasing its size - and no creating or deleting files or directories. It's fine if you want to mount a loopback file on an NTFS partition (say if you want to install Linux onto a Windows machine without repartitioning - a few distributions support running Linux out of a file on the Windows partition in this way).

It's also fine if you just want to read files from an NTFS partition - I use it for this all the time.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by jonadab · 2004-01-11 00:23 · Score: 2, Informative

> I think it's important to note that the issue with the current Linux
> kernel's NTFS support is its capabilities, not its quality.

Capabilities aren't part of quality? Do you want a car that can't make right
turns? What about a car that can't make turns at all -- it would still be
fine for driving straight ahead, and you could even put it in reverse...

> It can only write to a file without increasing its size - and no creating
> or deleting files or directories.

This limits its usefulness in important ways. Not that it is if no value,
but I would really like to think that in a few months someone will figure
out how to (safely) lift these restrictions.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by irgu · 2004-01-11 01:07 · Score: 4, Informative

> Capabilities aren't part of quality?
They are. But NTFS is a huge project. It takes a lot of time. Today it's developed as a hobby, couple of hours a week or not even that much.
> I would really like to think that in a few months
> someone will figure out how to (safely) lift these restrictions
The developers said in the forums: somebody having lots of time must start active coding (no need for reverse engineering any more) or hire coders and finance the development.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by perlchild · 2004-01-11 07:07 · Score: 1

Such a restriction would also block current, commerical rescue-offerings, at least, UNLESS they licensed the driver themselves, somehow. And you would be committing a felony unknowingly just by using such software, until those software companies declared their (up to now anyways) secret licensing of this driver. It just isn't worth the political trouble for Microsoft. As long as captive-ntfs requires ntfs.sys from microsoft, Microsoft would be harming its friends more than its enemies by fighting it.

I bet they regret not patenting ntfs though :)
Did they file patent on winfs??
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by berzerke · 2004-01-11 11:23 · Score: 1

...What happens when the EULA is revised is another matter, but this would have to get on the MS radar for that to happen, which will take at least a year, then another six months or so until the next update/revision cycle..

Or M$ just uses the next service pack/patch to revise the EULA.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by berzerke · 2004-01-11 11:28 · Score: 2, Informative

...As long as captive-ntfs requires ntfs.sys from microsoft, Microsoft would be harming its friends more than its enemies by fighting it.

I don't mean this a troll, but when has M$ ever cared about stabbing a "friend" in the back? They do it every time it becomes convenient. I remember a cellphone company story a while back who partnered with M$ and a last I heard, we suing for stealing technology as just one example.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by __aatgod8309 · 2004-01-11 17:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

obviously no. If someone has a valid XP licence they should be allowed to use it in any way they wish to and this includes the NTFS driver.

The flaw in your argument: use of "obviously" and "should" instead of giving a reason why Microsoft would allow this. (Allow? Yes. Until their EULA is declared illegal or void, it's a legally binding agreement with MS software users - even when it's stupid.)
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by jonadab · 2004-01-13 02:41 · Score: 1

> Such a restriction would also block current, commerical rescue-offerings,
> at least, UNLESS they licensed the driver themselves, somehow.

They probably already do, but if not it would be trivial for Microsoft to
arrange agreements with each of them.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Re:Using microsoft programs in Captive. by jonadab · 2004-01-13 03:08 · Score: 1

> Or M$ just uses the next service pack/patch to revise the EULA.

That would still take 2-3 months. And that's *after* captive-ntfs gets on the
Microsoft radar, which is six months *after* it's widely deployed, which is
six months from today. So we're still talking fifteen months -- enough time,
in theory, for someone to code the desired capabilities into the native NTFS
driver. (One of the big distros should probably pay someone to do this, though,
as it hasn't happened up till now. Probably because most of the serious kernel
hackers haven't used Windows since roughly 3.11 for Workgroups, as they have
a tendency to live deep in server/developer space, where most of the "users"
are programmers of some kind and even the managers have heard of Unix.)

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

The New Old Thing by twentycavities · 2004-01-10 11:49 · Score: 2, Informative

I hope accomplishing this didn't involve modifying undocumented internal structures.

Raymond Chen will be pissed.

--
Monstromart: Where shopping is a baffling ordeal

Re:The New Old Thing by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 07:51 · Score: 0

This reads like a "Top 10 Reasons to not use Microsoft Windows" list.

Torrent? by Thing+1 · 2004-01-10 12:01 · Score: 1

Currently downloading LinuxDefender and it's very, very slow; most likely Slashdotted. (1-3 KB/s on a 80-90 KB/s DSL line...)

Could a kind soul who has already gotten it please make a torrent out of it? Thanks!

--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.

Re:Torrent? by linuxdefender · 2004-01-10 12:11 · Score: 1

Here is a mirror: ftp://ftp.bitdefender.ro/pub/produse/release/linux /free/LinuxDefender
Re:Torrent? by linuxdefender · 2004-01-10 12:18 · Score: 1

Another romanian mirror: ftp://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/pub/people/xcyborg/. This ISO contains additional BitDefender for Linux packages.
Re:Torrent? by Thing+1 · 2004-01-10 13:17 · Score: 1

Thanks!

--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.

One thing I wonder by vadim_t · 2004-01-10 12:31 · Score: 1

Will this driver speed up the creation of a native one?

Since now NTFS.SYS is working under Linux although through emulation it should be quite easy to spy to what it's doing, and try to improve the native driver based on that.

Re:One thing I wonder by irgu · 2004-01-10 12:51 · Score: 1
- Will this driver speed up the creation of a native one? Since now NTFS.SYS is working under Linux although through emulation it should be quite easy to spy to what it's doing, and try to improve the native driver based on that.
IMHO it won't help much. The native driver developers say, they have the knowledge but not the time to finish the driver. NTFS is quite complex.
Re:One thing I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-10 17:29 · Score: 0

Couldn't someone at IBM slip them some help since NTFS and HPFS are related? Or did IBM fire all the OS/2 people?
Re:One thing I wonder by onomatomania · 2004-01-10 18:49 · Score: 2, Informative

I don't think this really changes anything. They've always had the ability to single-step/reverse engineer the windows NTFS driver, it's not like they lacked that ability before. But that's a very daunting task, regardless of whether you do it in Windows or in Linux, because it's a complicated filesystem and the driver is pretty big. It's like saying, "Hey! We got these great new backpacks for our climb to the top of Everest! They're red instead of our old ones which were black. But otherwise they're the same model."
Re:One thing I wonder by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-11 07:15 · Score: 0

IBM doesn't own HPFS, they licenced it from Microsoft. I think modern OS/2 systems use JFS.

Linux "Switcher" CD's by devinjones · 2004-01-10 12:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

I see this as a crucial part of a "Switcher" CD that lets home users convert from Windows to Linux in small steps:

Boot from CD to try it out.
Convert to dual boot. There would be a utility to re-partition, install and configure for dual-boot. Let the user keep it dual-boot while they find substitutes for any Windows-only programs that Wine can't handle.
Convert to Linux only

You could give these out like AOL disks and slowly convert the installed base. There could be a utility to detect existing win32 programs and check their status in the Wine application list.

This would be the logical extension to Bruce Perens' UserLinux idea.

Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by /dev/trash · 2004-01-11 05:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Step 3 would never come for me, or a majority of users because of games and financial software.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by Gothmolly · 2004-01-11 07:36 · Score: 1

Except that Bruce Perens is just a talking head, as seen by that fact that he 'manages' and 'organizes' but doesn't 'produce'.

--
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by freeweed · 2004-01-11 08:26 · Score: 1

Knoppix is *almost* there. I've recently been playing with it, and other than a lack of shortcut to the correct script (say, "Install Knoppix to Hard Drive" or something), your steps are precisely what I've done. Well, I'm still at step 2, but whatever. So far Knoppix had a better time with the video on my laptop than any other distro (unsupported ATI chipset, need to use the stock VESA driver, but most distros end up with a shitty resolution and "letterboxing" around the entire screen).

It's actually pretty amazing just what Wine's been able to handle so far. An MFC game I wrote a couple of years back works perfectly, in fact better than it does under Windows (multiple sounds override each other in Windows, but under Wine they finish playing before the next one starts. Also, the sound ends when the game closes, as opposed to in Windows, where even with the application closed, the sound continues to play until finished). I've ran a bunch of console emulators and they perform nicely, if a bit slow. Pathing issues seem to crop up; I assume I need to configure Wine a bit more. It's fun to run things like Internet Explorer and WinZip in Linux, I have to say :)

Other than the lack of a quick "install knoppix" icon, and the fact that the partition tool (cfdisk) isn't exactly ready for my parents to use, it's pretty much there. I've been converting people at school for the past week! :)

--
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by damiam · 2004-01-11 10:32 · Score: 1

Maybe not for everyone, but WineX and Crossover Office can fix those problems for a lot of people.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by jdray · 2004-01-11 13:32 · Score: 1

Not to try and sound like I'm defending Mr. Perens, as I don't really know the man, nor much about him, but I would say that, in the battle for the desktop, organization will win out. Microsoft, for all their other ills, is way ahead here, and attacking with strategies born from chaos theory (our community's current methods) doesn't seem to be working.

I did a little reading on the UserLinux site, and I don't have much argument at all with what Mr. Perens has to say, nor how he says it. Okay, now I guess I'm defending him. My point is that, in order to move FORWARD, there has to be a clearly defined strategy. As it is now, we're just moving, and forward progress is just by happenstance.

--
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by fr0dicus · 2004-01-13 06:10 · Score: 1

Or a games console - IMHO console game ranges are much more abundant and generally of a higher quality. Anything that they struggle to do, like FPS online games with customisable maps, are generally ported to Linux or run well under WineX like you say. Even this is changing. I believe the next iteration of consoles will kill PC gaming for ever, and not before time.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by leifm · 2004-01-14 05:16 · Score: 1

I can't even stay on step two, crappy ACPI support drives me crazy.

--

"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-15 07:02 · Score: 0

Suuuuuure. I don't have to mod my PC to play games I leech off BitTorrent.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by Slack3r78 · 2004-01-16 06:20 · Score: 1

Not saying this would affect you personally, but I've found my headaches with ACPI have gone away with 2.6. Whereas I used to have to turn it off in BIOS to keep the machine from crashing, it now works flawlessly. YMMV.
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by leifm · 2004-01-16 08:26 · Score: 1

Does sleep and/or hibernate work yet? My single biggest issue with any Linux distro I've tried is that I can't close the lid of my laptop and have it go to sleep. Depending on machine and distro either X would get all messed up, or absolutely nothing would happen, as is the case with my current machine.

--

"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Re:Linux "Switcher" CD's by Slack3r78 · 2004-01-16 10:17 · Score: 1

Honestly, I'm not sure. I haven't got my laptop loaded with Linux as I haven't had the time it'd take to get my wifi card, etc working, and my I have so many desktops running at any given time, I wouldn't really notice if one was up or not. It does seem to kick into a sort of sleep-like state when it's not crunching though. Like I said, my crashes went away, but I don't know where laptop support is at right now.

It is legal by Qwavel · 2004-01-10 17:16 · Score: 1

It is legal. The technique used by captive has been used by other products, such as the Systems Internals NTFSdos product. MS works with and even promotes this company so they can't now complain when others do the same thing.

Re:It is legal by irgu · 2004-01-11 00:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

Varies on country. Read the EULA. If it's valid in your country it's apparently a violation.
However the EULA also states that any use of the software not expressly granted to the end user is reserved by Microsoft. This way Microsoft can say OK for friends and NO for competitors. Did you already forget when Microsoft threatened MS Visual FoxPro users some months ago who used the same trick?
Ditch Microsoft then no such troubles.

pagefile by hitchhacker · 2004-01-10 22:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now that there is reliable NTFS write support, maybe we could get a kernel modification to use the pagefile.sys as a swap partition.

mkswap /mnt/ntfs/pagefile.sys
swapon /mnt/ntfs/pagefile.sys

What about using the windows temp directory for storage of highly used apps and libs?

-metric

Re:pagefile by irgu · 2004-01-10 23:55 · Score: 2, Informative

The difference isn't reliability but functionality. The rewritten NTFS code is reliable but it's incomplete, it gives "permission denied" or "not supported" for most of the write operations.
The commands, you wrote, should work with either driver without any kernel modification but Captive NTFS is much slower.
Re:pagefile by buckinm · 2004-01-11 14:46 · Score: 1

You could do that, but I would think it would make your swap partition pretty slow...

--
This isn't any ordinary darkness. It's advanced darkness.
Re:pagefile by kiwi_mcd · 2004-01-12 08:08 · Score: 2, Informative

I agree that it would be a good use of the disk space but there is a problem with this in that most of the time pagefile.sys is not a fixed size or location - the file can change location on disk and be fragmented. As a side note for those using Windows regularly (I know it is not so many of this crowd ;-) ) then I would recommend making the swap space in Windows a fixed size and then defragmenting using a good defragmenter (Microsoft one probably won't do it).

Depends on how they try to put it by phorm · 2004-01-11 21:56 · Score: 1

Not allowed to use it without an installed copy of NT (or another OS with that file) - probably legal. Not allowed to use it at all even if you own a copy of NT... probably not.

Then again, it could be a grey area... it's like the "am I allowed to mod my XBox, am I allowed to help other people mod theirs to use it for what the want" issue.

Try QTparted by fwarren · 2004-01-12 04:54 · Score: 1

On the menu go to Knoppix -> Root Terminal
type qtparted and press Enter

If someone can use Partition Magic, they should be comfortable with QTParted, it even resizes NTFS.

--
vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.

Slashdot Mirror

Knoppix Variant Offers Full NTFS Write Support

100 comments