I have an external hard disk that will hang off one of my linux boxes serving ftp. the hard drive belongs to a group i'm associated with, but will be passed on to someone else (not necessarily a linux person) in the future. they will in turn hang it off their computer (possibly/likely) windows for future ftp use.

i need advice choosing a file system for this drive. i started with fat32, but the lack of permissions and general crappyness are making me want to go reiserfs or ext3. i checked out the tools (LTOOLS,explore2fs) for accessing these under windows and they don't seem too robust or user friendly.

what can i use that has real file permission attributes under linux yet will be accessible relatively easily under windows?

thanks,

-dan

Your only choice for sharing filesystems between linux and windows is FAT32. I assume (reading between the lines) you intend to keep the data when you pass the drive off to someone else so reformatting may not an option.

maybe a ISO file system? (i don't know of the tools to make these under linux tho)

and yes, your only choice on a real file system is FAT32, or a ISO image (blame M$ for not allowing support for other file systems that actually work)