NTFS-3G problem (was Re: OH DEAR)

Mon Apr 30 18:32:35 UTC 2007

J-F,  Thanks again for taking the time to help me on this issue -- much, 
much appreciated.  The next time I have the drive attached to my XP box, 
I'll try another chkdsk /f.  Incidentally, I found that I could not copy 
all the files from the removable to a fixed drive so, as you say, that 
saved me from wasting my time!   I will let you know how things 
progress. Maurice

Jean-François Gagnon Laporte wrote:
> On 4/29/07, Maurice Murphy <m1625 at rogers.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi Jean-François,
>>
>> Well, I'm back again with Feisty and am generally speaking very happy
>> (my only other problem is my inability to install my webcam).  I tried
>> your first possible solution to my removable disk problem without
>> success.  I am reluctant to try your second solution for a couple of
>> reasons: first as a newbie, I might muck things up and be unable to
>> recover, more importantly, however, I don't think I'm getting to the
>> root of the matter.
>>
>>     
> Well the solution I gave you earlier was because you said that the
> name of the device node for your removable hard drive was constantly
> changing. There is a tool available for testing out udev rules before
> applying them so that could a testing ground for you if you wanted to
> go that far.
>
>   
>> Why would Feisty complain that my removable drive needs to be checked?
>> I have run it under Windows XP and given it a chkdsk, which it passes
>> with flying colours.  In Ubuntu I have run ntfsfix on it and, again, all
>> appears well, with lots of okays and a final statement of success.
>>
>>     
> It may be related to how ntfs-3G handles the partition.
>
>   
>> Yet this drive originally worked just fine under Edgy (not so now)
>> without the need to 'force' mount it.  Can you think of any way that I
>> could get around this?  My original line in fstab was:
>>
>> /dev/sdb5 /media/windows ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8
>>
>> and now is:
>>
>> /dev/sdb5 /media/windows ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0
>>
>>     
> Seems fine I guess ... except it's still using an arbitrary device
> node instead of it's uuid.
>
>   
>> The only thing I can think of doing is to reformat the removable drive,
>> but since it contains ALL my valuable backup data, you can understand
>> that I am most reluctant to do this, with the inherent need of copying
>> everything to another ntfs drive, reformatting and then copying
>> everything back again -- not a trivial task!  But I will do this as a
>> last resort, if necessary.  What do you think?  I wouldn't blame you if
>> something went wrong!
>>
>>     
> That won't change anything to the problem at hand so this solution
> will be a waste of time for you :).
>
>   
>> Or do you think I should report this as a bug?  I can live with it, as I
>> rarely turn off this computer, so it's no big deal :-)
>>
>>     
> >From the looks of it, you might want to review this page :
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions/ThirdPartyNTFS3G
>
> Have a look at it to see how they do it. From what I can see, it seems
> to be related to how NTFS-3G handles your removable drive. The
> approach I would use to fix your problem would be to :
>
>  - First, search launchpad for bugs about NTFS-3G.
>  - Second, if you didn't find something interesting or related I would
> go directly to upstream's ressources pages like their forum and
> mailing list. It seems pretty specific so they should have a better
> idea than me.
>
> Here's are a couple of links for them :
>
>  * http://forum.ntfs-3g.org/
>  * http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=ntfs-3g-devel
>  * http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#questions
>
> Good luck :)
>
> Jean-François
>
>   
>> Many thanks for your help and advice,
>>
>> Maurice
>>
>> Jean-François Gagnon Laporte wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi Maurice,
>>>
>>> On 4/27/07, Maurice Murphy <m1625 at rogers.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Well, I gave Feisty a real good try!  Unfortunately, it didn't like my
>>>> HP removable drive in read/write mode.  Every time I did a reboot, it
>>>> changed the address of this drive from /dev/sdb5 to /dev/sdc5 and vice
>>>> versa requiring me to constantly change fstab.  As there seemed to be
>>>> little other difference for me between Edgy and Feisty, I reinstalled
>>>> the latter.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> I can suggest two options for fixing this behavior that I would try in
>>> order of complexity :
>>>
>>>  1 - Write your fstab so that it uses the uuid of the drive instead of
>>> the device node. They are available here : ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
>>>
>>>  2 - You could write an udev rule that would freeze your device name
>>> to an arbitrary name of your choosing like "/dev/hpdrive". Here's a
>>> link for a quick and well written howto by dsd :
>>> http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
>>>
>>> However, I find it odd that hal-dev-manager in gnome (I don't remember
>>> the exact name of the daemon though) doesn't automatically mount your
>>> removable drive without hacking your fstab.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>
>   

-- 
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