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

[givré]

Announcement : new release of ntfs-3g :

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/f...forum_id=50610

Change since the last version :
* new: top request: setuid root support, the driver can run unprivileged
* fix: the 'user' and 'users' fstab mount options didn't work (requires setuid root ntfs-3g)
* fix: time of last file modification and status change weren't updated

I didn't yet look into the setuid root support, but i'll do that in time.

Uploaded to testing. Please reports problems

[falnar]

Greetings,

I haven't been able to find an answer to this question, so I figured why not ask!

ntfs-3g has been working great for me thus far. I did run into the unclean journaling problem, but since I often leave Windows in hibernate it wasn't a huge surprise. However, is there a way to make it try to mount my ntfs partition, and if it fails, try to mount it read only? I tried adding a second identical line to my fstab file with "ro" added, but it ignored the second line. Would I have to write a boot-up script to take care of this? It seems like that might be the best option to handle various possible situations cleanly, however I wanted to check to see if anyone knew of a simpler solution. I realize this is slightly off topic, but hopefully it should be a simple "yes, write a script" or "no, use such-and-such instead". Wouldn't want to busy up the knowers . Thanks for your time and this fantastic program.

[Vlatko]

i'm still really sceptical over using this feature, so much that i haven't even tried it yet, because all my stuff is stored on one 250gb ntfs drive.

basically i wanna know, is there any chance that the hard drive becomes corrupt, unusable even in windows with me loosing all my data, just because of using ntfs-3g?

sorry if this comes across as a silly question.

[givré]

Hi all,

falnar, unfortunatly, there is no ntfs-3g option for that kind of things (AFAIK). It exists for ext3/ext2, but not for ntfs-3g. a little script in rc.local is the way to go, i think.

Vlatko, it's highly improbable that your drive becomes corrupt and unusable. This driver is use by hundreds of thousands of users.

Ok, so now for everybody, if there is still somebody who follow this awfully long thread :
As probably some people know, i'm actually working on a configuration GUI for ntfs-3g :

http://givre.cabspace.com/ntfs-config/

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=337970

I think it's now enough mature to make it the default installation method of this howto, so people will not have to ends up editing there fstab...
What do people think about that ?

[Souljah]

I can't mount it, before it used to display Local Disk on my desktop, now it doesn't. From my computer I can see it but when I try to access it I get this error:

mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda1 is already mounted on /media/hda1

mount failed

How do I fix that?

[Vlatko]

Vlatko, it's highly improbable that your drive becomes corrupt and unusable. This driver is use by hundreds of thousands of users.

thank you very much for this awesome simple and really straight forward howto.
everything works from the first try, you gotta love it.

[Tmi]

EDIT: Both problems got solved when I did point B and A in the below.

Hi, I just followed the first post and installed ntfs-3g. I'm sure these problems are solved somewhere in this long thread, but it's just too much to search through.

This is the line for my NTFS-drive in fstab;

/dev/hda1       /mnt/win-C      ntfs-3g   defaults,locale=en_US.utf8  0  0

This doesn't seem to work, as the directory /mnt/win-C is totally empty if I try to browse it.

I also have a USB harddrive which is ntfs, and I thus followed that part of the guide too. The drive won't show up on my desktop and is not automatically mounted in the media-folder either, so I ran the manual mount command. Here is what I get then;

tommi@tommi-desktop:~$ sudo pmount-hal /dev/sda1
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because the NTFS journal file is unclean. Choices are:
 A) Shutdown Windows properly.
 B) Click the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows taskbar
    notification area before disconnecting the device.
 C) Use 'Eject' from Windows Explorer to safely remove the device.
 D) If you ran chkdsk previously then boot Windows again which will
    automatically initialize the journal.
 E) Run 'ntfsfix' on Linux which will reset the NTFS journal.
 F) Mount the volume read-only by using the 'ro' mount option.
Error: could not execute pmount

Any ideas on what to do to fix this? (I could of course try that 'ntfsfix', but I'd rather ask here first so I don't do anything bad )
Also, by following the very first post in this long thread, do I get the latest version of ntfs-3g or some really old one?

Thanks in advance

EDIT: Both problems got solved when I did point B and A in the below.

[givré]

Souljah, dapper or edgy ? can you give me your /etc/mtab & your /etc/fstab ?

Tmi, did you hibernate windows before booting on ubuntu ? Are you sure all your NTFS partition are correctly unmounted ? Do you use the eject feature in windows for USB device? those are the main cause that could lead to this message. And behind that there is the same : your partition wasn't correctly unmounted. SO to fix that, boot on windows, shutdown *properly* and boot on ubuntu.

[Tmi]

Tmi, did you hibernate windows before booting on ubuntu ? Are you sure all your NTFS partition are correctly unmounted ? Do you use the eject feature in windows for USB device? those are the main cause that could lead to this message. And behind that there is the same : your partition wasn't correctly unmounted. SO to fix that, boot on windows, shutdown *properly* and boot on ubuntu.

I fixed the problem by going into XP and shutting it down properly. Now everything works like a charm.

[Souljah]

Souljah, dapper or edgy ? can you give me your /etc/mtab & your /etc/fstab ?

Tmi, did you hibernate windows before booting on ubuntu ? Are you sure all your NTFS partition are correctly unmounted ? Do you use the eject feature in windows for USB device? those are the main cause that could lead to this message. And behind that there is the same : your partition wasn't correctly unmounted. SO to fix that, boot on windows, shutdown *properly* and boot on ubuntu.

I am on Dapper.

Here is my fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hda2       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda1       /media/hda1     ntfs-3g     defaults,locale=en_US.utf8   0    0
/dev/hda3       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hdd        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

Here is my mtab:

/dev/hda2 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
/dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ntfs rw,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 0

What can you make of this?