3dEyes**, of NaviTracker and Romashka fame, who also did recent ports of SAMBA to BeOS, has released a highly experimental NTFS driver for BeOS. This driver both reads from and writes to NTFS file systems. Currently, it can read files, folders, and symlinks; write to files, create new directories, files and symlinks, deleting files/directories, renaming and moving files, editing of volume labels and free space detection.
Seems autumn is bringing Haiku forward… if I’m not mistaken, last autumn was also filled with great happenings, such as Java etc etc…
Regarindg NTFS RW support. Is this the same driver as the one for Linux but modified? Is it a complete newly written driver?
It’d be interesting to see if Linux/Haiku could get any use of each other here so all Alt Oses might have a chance to get NTFS RW support. Even though my own perverted wish is that Windows get HaikuFS support =)
>Regarindg NTFS RW support. Is this the same driver as the one for Linux >but modified? Is it a
>complete newly written driver?
It’s based on ntfs-3g driver for linux http://www.linux-ntfs.org/
but 3dEyes added some features to it:
* ability to change volume label
* attribute emulation for mime imitation (for fixed list of extensions for now)
And he want to add some more unique features
Implement extended attributes to support BeOS/Haiku features.
Implement query support, so you could search on ntfs with Tracker.
He also would like to integrate his driver in Haiku tree.
Edited 2006-09-22 15:48
//And he want to aDD some more unique features
Implement extended attributes to support BeOS/Haiku features.
Implement query support, so you could search on ntfs with Tracker.// 😉
Man, having query support would be great, I really hope the Haiku team adds this driver in the tree. I want that R1 right now.
I believe that mime imitation doesn’t belong into filesystem drivers – after all, the “magic” list of file types is independent of the storage.
that said, ntfs has file streams, which could be used to store such information for longer – now, if the root node (ie. root directory) supported streams, too (I don’t know if it does), there’d be a comfortable place to keep query data..
hmm.. now, zfs with query support would interest me even more.. back to the drawing board
Even though my own perverted wish is that Windows get HaikuFS support =)
I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible; even Windows has options for reading ext2 filesystems (from a non-MS source), and FreeBSD can now read (and write?) ext2, reiserfs and maybe even xfs volumes, too.
But I think it’s more important to get Haiku support for NTFS, since most people interested in switching to Haiku will be coming from Windows.
Great great news altough the highly experimental bit… aj aj who’s going to be first to sacrifice his 100GB mp3 collection?
Yes, even smarter to make a BFS FS driver for Windows!
Edited 2006-09-22 15:28
I was one of the first alpha testers of his driver two weeks ago when it was at version 0.0.1a and tested it very intensively, and didn’t have any crash. Only once i had some index warnings which was fixed by windows itself upon boot, but this is due something with ntfs 3g lib. It works great over here with my 250Gb ntfs partition and also very fast!
So “highly experimental bit” is just to be on the safe side 🙂
I would like to see source. The problem with the writes may be solvable by forcing more frequent flushing of the buffers. If the source was released I could test that idea. And yes, I realize that could make the driver slower to operate, but keeping one’s data is more important.
Still, it is a needed driver. My friend recieved his XP laptop with no DOS-formatted partitions, and only after configuring a BeOS one that filled up the rest of the hard drive and moving tons of code/programs/data to his BeOS side did he discover he could not access any of the files on his Windows side.
Lucky for him I had a spare adapter to move the hard drive to his Desktop (his lan was not working yet with BeOS at the time – that is why he needed Windows to download from Bebits).
Also note that 3dEyes says that you can’t corrupt your data if you using his driver only for reading. Going back to build BeOS live CD wich will help tons of my friends when they broke windows and can’t get their data back 🙂
That is quite true but also quite pointless. Of course, if you don’t alter anything, nothing is altered thus nothing is corrupted.
—
You can equally well recover files using a Linux live CD or a Windows live CD.
You can equally well recover files using a Linux live CD or a Windows live CD.
…Or a dos live cd with ntsf-dox. What’s your point ?
BeOS was the earliest live-cd I ran across. BeOS 4.5 it was I believe. It only displayed in grayscale to discourage copying 🙂 You could very easily make the argument that the BeOS popularised licecds as we know them.
On a related note, the new Haiku PR department seems to be doing its job lately judging from the stories on OSNews. Good on them.
The first BeOS LiveCD I ever used was the R3 Demo CD (I have one still) – and it was only in grayscale on unsupported video cards. First time I loaded it up on my Matrox Millenium card, it worked in color like a champ! Been lovin’ BeOS ever since
RE: the Haiku PR department, I’m not sure they are the ones responsible for the rash of Haiku/BeOS stories lately… Probably more likely that it’s the recent upswing of news, and Thom’s diligence in following the various BeOS/Haiku news sites like a hawk
Edited 2006-09-22 23:53
Windows usually write some files to a mounted disk e.g. Thumbs.db and macosx does something simular
Even though my own perverted wish is that Windows get HaikuFS support =)
There is still a BeFS driver around the internet for windows 9x and NT4.
The NT4 driver doesn’t work on 2000/XP. It will BSOD on boot if you install it in an NT5 based system.
Actualy this BFS driver could be used on win2k up to sp3 and even on XP, with no service packs installed.
Anyways, does anyone know were that driver came from? who made it? what license it is under? ( i found it on BeShare but that is all i know about it )
BFS driver for Windows and old NTFS driver for BeOS were developed by SWsoft company, a former BeOS resseller and Be’s partner.
http://old.sw.com.sg/products/beos/
http://old.sw.com.sg/docs/profile.pdf
Edited 2006-09-24 18:56
but what I really need is a driver that writes to ex2 ,ex3 and rieserFS,I dual boot BeOS and several flavors of Linux on this box and I find it frustrating that I cabread only to my linux partitions and nothing on the Linux side,so i have to keep a Fat32 partition for a common ground,,I stay in BeOs for most tasks but I still need to boot to Linux for decent USB support and better recognition of my various peripherials,but i used to love to be able to go in the”back door”from BeOS to Win98 when I needed to tweak around with stuff MS woudln’t allow you to,of course stuff like PHLAK has made this kid of a moot point,but I still like the Be interface WAY better than anything Linux has to offer,really can’t wait for Haiku to get done,and wish more of the Linux devs would jump on it,because that’s what the world needs the EOU of BeOS and the free open source aspects of Linux,that would really have MS worrying