HOWTO: NTFS with read/write support using ntfs-3g (easy method)

[cord]

From what i saw in this forum (and you could be sure that if people had trouble with the new driver, they'll post it here) :

This driver begin to be better & better with time, but it still need some time & testing to be 100% safe.
There were in fact a little problem with the first version (20070714-BETA).
One user reported corruption when deleting some file : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...44#post1284744, since all worked fine for me with deleting (intensive testing), i didn't know what to beleive, and then an other guy report the same type of problem http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...80#post1336880. After some explication, it appears that before the problem, he was trying to moving directory (non empty) created in windows in the same partition, something i never tried intensivly. So i test it and it appears that they were in fact a problem with moving/renaming file that could explain the 2 problems (see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009&page=27 post 265 & 267). I reported that to Szaka (the dev of ntfs-3g) who release few days after a new version that fix the problem. Since that date, no other problems were reported.

For the high CPU usage, mount.ntfs-3g never go up to 20% for me when creting file/directory, so i don't no what is relly the problem.

The only main problem i see (and a lot of time reported) is that ntfs-3g need a really clean partition, so if the drive were not sanely unmounted (hard reboot, hibernation...), it will fail, and you will need to reboot to windows to solve the problem. But that's not really a problem when you do things sanely .

Now for the AMD64 version. Since the begining, some people try it, with success or not. On guy try to install it via a 32 bit chroot, but apparently it was a bad idea (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...7#post1290607), an other guy reported success when recompiling it http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...98#post1330498 so i guess it's the way to go. Some gentoo user report success also

And on the main page, http://packages.gentoo.org/ebuilds/?...1_beta20070811 ntfs-3g is set to be avaible for AMD64, so it should work, but i can't support, since i can't test it myself. But if you really want, to recompile ntfs-3g, you will need to get the source:

apt-get source ntfs-3g
cd ntfs-3g-2007*
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

that will build three package for your system, you will need to install libntfs-3g & ntfs-3g. You will also need to recompile fuse (from my repo). And also hal (from my repo) if you want the patched version that support fuse.

That's it for today

Thanks for the tips. A few issues I ran into.

Firstly, for building fuse, it seems it requries libfuse-dev > 2.5x which I dont think is provided.

Also, after the package is built using dpkg-buildpackage, is it already installed or does one need to manually take care of that?

Sorry for the noob questions, this is my first week with ubuntu, former gentoo user

[rogeriovinhal]

Thanks for the tips. A few issues I ran into.

Firstly, for building fuse, it seems it requries libfuse-dev > 2.5x which I dont think is provided.

Also, after the package is built using dpkg-buildpackage, is it already installed or does one need to manually take care of that?

Sorry for the noob questions, this is my first week with ubuntu, former gentoo user

Read my last posts, you can install the newer fuse version the same way you are supposed to install ntfs-3g, with apt-get source and then dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot (or maybe with something different).

When you do dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot, .deb(s) file(s) is(are) created outside the source directory, so you can install them with dpkg -i.

The package filosofy is much more organized than the simply make install way.

[cord]

Read my last posts, you can install the newer fuse version the same way you are supposed to install ntfs-3g, with apt-get source and then dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot (or maybe with something different).

When you do dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot, .deb(s) file(s) is(are) created outside the source directory, so you can install them with dpkg -i.

The package filosofy is much more organized than the simply make install way.

Right, my point was that while trying to compile fuse with that same exact method, it failed on a libfuse-dev2.5 dependency which I was not able to resolve because the version of libfuse-dev I found was 2.4ish

I obviously tried to compile all the packages that were listed (ntfs-3g, libntfs-3g, hal, fuse) using the same buildpackage method.

[Paradoxdruid]

Thank you for a wonderful utility!

I'm having one small problem, though... when I copy files to the NTFS portion, I get a dialog "could not change permissions for foo", so I assume my fstab isn't set up correctly.

Right now, the relevant line in /etc/fstab is

/dev/sda1       /media/database ntfs-3g silent,umask=0,locale=en_US.utf8  0 0

Do I need to add a uid or gid? If so, what? Or do I need a different umask?

I know it's probably a simple question, but I've had trouble figuring it out. Thanks in advance!

[givré]

Right, my point was that while trying to compile fuse with that same exact method, it failed on a libfuse-dev2.5 dependency which I was not able to resolve because the version of libfuse-dev I found was 2.4ish

I obviously tried to compile all the packages that were listed (ntfs-3g, libntfs-3g, hal, fuse) using the same buildpackage method.

You don't need libfuse-dev to compile fuse, but compiling fuse will create it, and you will need it to compile ntfs-3g.
The way you should do it:
- compile fuse & install all the package created
- compile ntfs-3g and install libntfs-3g & ntfs-3g
- if you want, compile hal & install hal
- you can also complie & install pmount if you have an external usb device

[givré]

Thank you for a wonderful utility!

I'm having one small problem, though... when I copy files to the NTFS portion, I get a dialog "could not change permissions for foo", so I assume my fstab isn't set up correctly.

Right now, the relevant line in /etc/fstab is

/dev/sda1       /media/database ntfs-3g silent,umask=0,locale=en_US.utf8  0 0

Do I need to add a uid or gid? If so, what? Or do I need a different umask?

I know it's probably a simple question, but I've had trouble figuring it out. Thanks in advance!

I guess you use konqueror, it's something that has been already reported.
But i don't have an answer since i don't use it. You should try to put those option :

umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000

but not sure it will work.

[sciyoshi]

You should try to put those option :

umask=007,uid=1000,gid=1000

but not sure it will work.

Yea, those settings will work. Another possibility is to use this:

umask=007,gid=46

if you want anybody in group plugdev to be able to use it.

[givré]

I add this warning on top of the HowTo

If you can, it's always better to prefer ext3 to share file between windows & linux using http://fs-driver.org/

since i don't want people to think that ntfs-3g is the magic solution. There is no magic solution for ntfs, there is only better solution, and actually the better solution is ntfs-3g.
And please report every little problem you can have with this driver here, it's the only way to improve it. I don't want to learn bad things when it's too late. Thanks

[givré]

sciyoshi, i update the howto to add some explanation about the status of the different projects, it's something i wanted to do since a while.
Can i change the wiki in that way?

[SLP]

Great tutorial!!!...........got NTFS read and write working perfectly the first time