Re: "mount -t ntfs" vs "mount.ntfs" ?
On Wed 02 Feb 2022 at 11:16:18 (+0100), Yvan Masson wrote:
>
> > > > > Slightly off-topic question: using pre-5.15 kernel, how can I
> > > > > mount a
> > > > > partition with kernel driver?
> > > >
> > > > You can't, the NTFS kernel driver first appeared in Linux 5.15.
> > > >
> > > From what I understand, there was a read-only driver before 5.15:
> > > - see for example
> > > https://superuser.com/questions/139452/kernel-ntfs-driver-vs-ntfs-3g
> > > or
> > > https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/ntfs3-driver-faq/
> > > - kernel build config (/boot/config-....) also mentions ntfs, even
> > > for
> > > pre-5.15 kernels
> >
> > Sorry, you are correct, I was mistaken, it's been in the kernel tree
> > [1] for over a decade. However I can't find it mentioned in the config
> > for the Debian kernels on my machine so I'm assuming Debian don't
> > enable it (I'm looking in /boot/config-5.10.0-11-amd64). But you say
> > you found in in you kernel configs?
> >
> > [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/fs/ntfs
> >
> My mistake here, sorry :-) Indeed, Debian stable kernel's config does
> not mention NTFS, so my question is off-topic in this mailing list.
Not at all. Debian's kernel contain ntfs¹ in the source, and it's
not considered unusual to build custom kernels.
> For Linux Mint 20.3 LiveCD, kernel is 5.4.0-91.102 from Ubuntu, and
> its config mentions `CONFIG_NTFS=m`. Module is present in
> /lib/modules/5.4.0-91-generic/kernel/fs/. So I should be able to mount
> read-only with this driver, but don't know how.
Perhaps it is enough to modprobe ntfs (as root) before attempting
to mount the filesystem.
¹ It helps that ntfs-3g and ntfs3 have now have proper names. The
former is the one that I use, though almost exclusively as read only².
Buster's 4.19 kernel has NTFS in the source, but I've never tried it,
mainly because they don't configure it in the repository's images.
The documentation there hints that it is the 2nd generation ntfs
driver as it refers back to an earlier version, which one might
suppose is the first generation.
² On the one occasion I wrote anything, it was to remove that little
bit of vomit that Windows writes on its partitions. Having converted
a disk from MBR to GPT with gdisk, so that I could boot from it,
Windows could no longer mount the partition until it was removed —
it would just hang.
Cheers,
David.
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