[Gllug] Win&Lin accessible filesystems

[John Edwards]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 09:17:51AM -0000, Paul Brazier wrote:
> I've got a dual-boot Win2K/Linux PC and I want to have a partition
> accessible (r/w) to both OSs.
> 
> NTFS doesn't seem to be supported as standard by my kernel and looking
> at the "make xconfig" it looks like it's a little experimental (the
> write part at least). This seems strange as NTFS has been around a while
> - is it due to MS keeping the specs secret or something?

Yes, and MS changed NTFS subtly in Windows 2000 (to version 5 I believe).
It's rather difficult to write for a filesystem that is closed, secret 
and changes over time. There was a guy who was going to rewrite it based 
on knowledge he had gained when his company did some work for Microsoft 
but I think that died out due to legal threats.

Enabling write support in NTFS is labelled as "highly dangerous", as there 
have been reports of it corrupting filesystems.


> I also have a partition under Windows which fdisk says is "Win Ext'd
> (LBA)" (type f) - can I mount this and what switch do I need (I've
> looked through "man mount" but can't find it).

I would not trust what the DOS/Windows fdisk told me. Windows 95 fdisk 
used to report NTFS as HPFS (OS/2's filesystem, which NTFS is based on) 
and refuse to show or delete non-FAT extended partitions.

To list the partitions run the Linux fdisk as:
	fdisk -l /dev/hda

To mount a Windows FAT partition (eg the third primary partition) onto
the /mnt directory:
	mount -t vfat /dev/hda3 /mnt


> What would be the best filesystem to use that works r/w with both OSs if
> I re-format the partition? VFAT?

Both Windows 2000 and Linux can safely read and write FAT32, and many 
more systems can do FAT 16 (Windows 95, NT4). Only problem is that FAT 
does not understand file ownership or permissions, so you not be able 
to use them. If you need preservce them then there are other ways (eg 
second box running Samba and NFS, UMSDOS, VMWare, storing them in tar).


-- 
#------------------------------------------------------------#
|      John Edwards    Email: John.Edwards at uk.com            |
|                                                            |
|     "Security vulnerabilities are here to stay."           |
|   Scott Culp, Manager, Microsoft Security Response Center  |
#------------------------------------------------------------#

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