SPEC : Write Support For NTFS

[Florent Mertens]

Le vendredi 27 octobre 2006 à 16:25 -0400, Phillip Susi a écrit :
> I'm still confused about exactly what ntfs-3g is.  The limited amount of 
> information I have seen indicates that the existing kernel ntfs driver 
> was discarded and a complete rewrite was done, this time as a FUSE 
> driver.  If it is now stable, why hasn't it been ported back to kernel 
> space where it belongs, and merged into Linus's tree?

Ok, all that need some clarification.
ntfs-3g is a FUSE driver : http://fuse.sourceforge.net/
There is no way to backport it like that in the kernel because it use
some special feature, that can only be done... with fuse.

The linux-ntfs team maintain two kinds of drivers :

- A kernel driver (in fact the 2nd version of the kernel driver rewrite
from scratch by Anton Altaparmakov), which is, will know it all, mainly
read only. They are actually working on a read/write driver, but that
will not come at least before the end of 2007.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.file-systems.ntfs.devel/2597

And some people don't think that it will be good enough (a kernel driver
must be really good or not be at all.)

- A FUSE driver provide in the ntfsprogs package : ntfsmount. This one
allow more write support, but not full support. The fact that the driver
reside in user space make it also more safe. The ntfs-3g driver is based
on this driver with some big improvements that make it stable in all
read/write operations. This driver is actually in beta.

Regards,

Florent Mertens