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

[BongoBob]

sorry reboot. Not enough sleep, too much time in building package

Lol, no problem man, I understand.

Even after a reboot, it doesn't work. If it helps, windows is on a master 120gb drive, and linux on a 6gb slave drive. Heres the results of fdisk -l and his fstab.

david@David:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1         637     5116671    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2             638       14591   112085505    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5             638        1912    10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6            1913       14591   101844036    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 6448 MB, 6448619520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 784 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1         747     6000246   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2             748         784      297202+   5  Extended
/dev/hdb5             748         784      297171   82  Linux swap / Solaris

david@David:~$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hdb1       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hdb5       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hdd        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0
/dev/hda5       /media/hda5     ntfs-3g     silent,umask=0,locale=en_US.utf8,no_def_opts,allow_other    0    0
/dev/hda6       /media/hda6	ntfs-3g     silent,umask=0,locale=en_US.utf8,no_def_opts,allow_other    0    0

Hope that you guys can see what we're doin wrong.

[givré]

Ok, so those 2 partitions come from an other HD.
Did you try to mount it with the kernel HD?

[givré]

New version is upload in all mirrors.

Comment on the changes :

fix: rename was always denied if the target file or directory existed

This fix the saving file problem with gedit
But the date is still not always update.

fix: fuse kernel module is automatically loaded, no need for config

You don't need anymore to add fuse in /etc/modules, since it will be dynamicly loaded by ntfs-3g. But keeping it is safe.

change: top request: full read-write access to everybody by default

now no_def_opts & allow_other & umask=0 are defaults.
The fstab line will now simply be :

/dev/<your partition>     /media/<mount point>     ntfs-3g     defaults,locale=en_US.utf8   0    0

[ardnut]

What do you mean?

On a default Kubuntu install if you were to plug in an ntfs drive then it will be automatically detected and clicking on the drive icon that appears would mount it using the default ntfs driver and you'll have read only access to it.

After installing the ntfs-3g package this no longer works. What does happen is that the drive is still detected and displays as a removable usb disk in the "storage media" applet and clicking on properties for this drive will tell you the filesystem is ntfs. However when trying to access the drive it is unable to mount it and comes back with an unknown error.

My question was related to where is it defined how a specific filesystem (on removable drives) should be mounted? Is it hard coded in to one of the apps? or is there a config file where you can update the mappings? Is this something handled by hal? or is it KDE?

[givré]

There is different way.
I'll give you the gnome exemple since i don't know enough how kde works.
When you plug a removable device, it's will be detect by hal which set different things about the drive, one of them is the fs use. gnome-volume-manager will then see this change, and will mount the drive with pmount (which allow mounting by simple user) and the appropriate fs.
Because hal set the fs to ntfs, the drive will be mount with the ntfs read-only driver.
I patch pmount to add ntfs-3g as possible fs, but this as to be set as option , and since g-v-m will always choose explicitly the ntfs driver (it mount it with -t ntfs option), there couldn't be any interaction.
The only way to mount it with ntfs-3g is to choose explicitly the ntfs-3g driver (with -t ntfs-3g) and that what do the nautilus script.
This as been largely tested and it works. But that's the gnome exemple.

Now, i don't really now how kde works, i know that one of the equivalent of g-v-m is ivman (not sure it's the one use in kubuntu, you should check that), but i don't really know how it works. You should try to run it in debug mode and see what's happens when you plug your device. Can't say more for the moment.

[prince_niceguy]

am using 64 bit AMD. I have compiled the ntfs-3g code and it is working perfectly fine. But I am not able to load usb drive using ntfs-3g. I have tried downloading the nautilus script but since I am using 64 bit Ubuntu it is not allowing me to down load.

can some body share the script so that i can test ntfs-3g on my usb drive... ...

[givré]

You'll have to build it yoursef.
Get first the source :

apt-get source ntfs-3g-nautilus-tools

build it

cd ntfs-3g-nautilus-tools
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

install the package created :

cd ../
dpkg -i ntfs-3g-nautilus-tools*.deb

That should work.

[BongoBob]

Ok, so those 2 partitions come from an other HD.
Did you try to mount it with the kernel HD?

Probably not, since I have no idea what that means

Could you elaborate a little for me?

[givré]

Probably not, since I have no idea what that means

Could you elaborate a little for me?

kernel HD -> kernel driver
Just try to mount it with a command line :

sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/hda5 /media/hda5

[MiThRaZoR]

I don't get what you mean by mount point.

/dev/DSK1_VOL1     /media/<mount point>     ntfs-3g     defaults,locale=en_US.utf8   0    0

What am I supposed to put there?