Debian and NTFS
 

im gonna try out debian after about a year with redhat and other distros
getting the kernal to read NTFS partitions was easy thanks to rpm and Linux NTFS Project
but i dont see anything for debian...
i found http://packages.debian.org/testing/source/linux-ntfs but not sure what to install

is it easy to get the kernal to read NTFS partitions in debian?

If it's not in the kernel itself it's really easy to get. If you have a working kernel you can simply go to /usr/src/linux. Then run "make menuconfig". Go to Device Drivers - Filesystems - DOS/FAT/NT fyle systems and add NTFS support in there. Then you can compile the kernel again with the only thing that's changed being added NTFS support.

After recompiling the kernel you run: "apt-get install ntfsprogs" which will install:
ntfsprogs - tools for doing neat things in NTFS partitions from Linux

It should work after that.

You don't need to install anything new or compile anything in Sarge. A simple:
wourld do.

Note that this is read-only access. For write access, I would recommend captive-ntfs (just do a search on google).

sorry to butt in, but i was just reading something interesting in menuconfig about NTFS write support..
as of 2.6 kernel NTFS write support is safe "as far as we know". as of 2.5 kernel it is NOT safe... thought that was interesting... Just a comment

Yes, that happened to me in a 2.4 kernel. Lost all of my data.

I've recommended captive-ntfs for write access because apparently they use the actual Windows drivers to access the file system, so technically there should be no problem.

I just thought it was neat that write support was progressing so nicely. Damn hard to keep up with all this, every little tidbit helps.. I will definately check out captive-ntfs you mentioned as well, thanks.

There's more write support than before, but still limited. The file has to have the same size than the file to be overwritten and you can't create new files.
You'd better off with captive, or even better, without ntfs at all.

I think you just have to add a line to /etc/fstab
Put 'ntfs' (no quotes) as the fs type and set it read-only.