The NTFS specifics -- WAS: Fedora 7 "Moonshine": Freedom vs. Ease-of-Use (Part 1)

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Sun Jun 3 14:34:21 UTC 2007


On Sat, 2007-06-02 at 23:38 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
> In the second Big Point Against Fedora is this (mis)statement:
> "Fedora doesn't even include support for read-only access to NTFS
> partitions."
> Uh, I thought we had that one resolved and did offer ro access to NTFS?
> Certainly put it into the release announcement and TalkingPoints.

I've noted the FUSE driver in Fedora Extras since version 6 (5?).

The FUSE (user-space) driver is the 3rd generation, which has solved
some (all?) legal issues, as well as the nasty SAM-SID** write issue
which still plagues NT itself**.

The NTFS kernel driver was the 1st-2nd generations, which has the nasty
SAM-SID issue**.  That's why it is recommended you only mount read-only
with that driver.

-- Bryan

**NOTE:  I'm a long-time NT admin (since the 3.1 beta) and 99% of MSCEs
are utterly ignorant of.  It's getting worse now that external drives
are shipping with NTFS.  NTFS should _never_ be written to by any system
_except_ those that created it, because of the local Registry's SAM
(System Accounts Manager) and its SID (Security ID) tie-ins.  The
work-arounds are numerous (from the NT domain model with a
"network-wide" SAM-SID to the Dynamic Disks/LDM Disk label in NT5+ aka
2000+ that store select SAM-SID info in non-filesystem portions of the
disk).  For the most part "home users" who run NT 5.1/6.0 "Home"
editions (Windows XP/Vista Home) avoid it because you can't apply ACE
(access control entries) to the NTFS filesystem from the GUI (only via
the CACLS command at the CMD.EXE CLI).  But it's still a major issue
with "Pro users" who run NT 5.1/6.0 "Pro" editions (and, even more so,
earlier versions like NT 5.0/2000).

Making matters worse, there is _no_ "read-only" NTFS driver in NT
itself.  For NT 5.0 (let alone earlier) versions, you can quickly
_trash_ a NTFS.  For NT 5.1+ (XP/2003+), if the system detects SIDs in
the NTFS filesystem it doesn't have it its local registry (or the
network-wide registry of a NT domain -- and that includes the same SAM
model stored in Active Directory Services, ADS), it often doesn't even
let you see the filesystem.  Opening up Disk Manager in NT5.1+/XP+ will
show the NTFS filesystem there, but won't let you assign a drive letter
or anchor point (anchor = NT's "UNIX-like" mount point option).


-- 
Bryan J. Smith         Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org   http://thebs413.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------
        Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution




More information about the marketing mailing list