ntfs kernel module

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Alexandre Oliva wrote:

> On Oct 26, 2004, Alexandre Strube <surak at casa.surak.eti.br> wrote:
>
> > The ntfs module used in other distributions is mainly read-only... how
> > can this corrupt a file system?
>
> All it takes is a bit of incorrect memory management in the kernel.
> As soon as you corrupt kernel data structures, all bets are off.  Say,
> double-free of a pointer to an ntfs read-only buffer could corrupt
> whatever data structure that buffer was being reused for after the
> first free.

i've always wondered about this -- i still don't see how that could
corrupt the NTFS structure *on* *disk*.  sure, it's entirely possible
that the cached NTFS info in RAM might get screwed, you might lose the
ability to *read* files from the hard drive.  but i don't see how that
equates to actually *damaging* the contents on the hard drive.

if i mount a filesystem read-only, i expect it never to be altered.
doesn't NTFS use the same VFS layer as everyone else?  shouldn't
"readonly" mounting be respected by that layer?

rday