slack 12, can't mount drives as rw

Twister512 · 12-27-2007, 10:30 AM

I have slack 12 installed on my system, I have some drives that are NTFS. When the system boots and mounts the drives, it says they are mounted as rw. I check the kernel and all filesystems I have on my system are compiled for rw. When I try to save a file or make a directory, it says filesystem is read only. I am confused.

--Paul--

and_ru · 12-27-2007, 10:48 AM

Hi!
You'll need two packages installed to make it RW:
1)FUSE
2)NTFS-3G

Read the notes and readmes on these pages!

Andrei

David1357 · 12-27-2007, 12:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twister512

When I try to save a file or make a directory, it says filesystem is read only.

If you want seamless access to your NTFS partitions, you might try downloading the latest kernel source and building it yourself. I am running Ubuntu 7.10 in a dual boot with Windows XP and I share the same e-mail directories between Ubuntu and Windows.

Camarade_Tux · 12-27-2007, 12:53 PM

Just my 2€cents, the ntfs driver in linux kernel can write on an ntfs partition but this is very limited (especially the filesize must not increase). That's probably why it advertises read-write.
And there is no need special kernel requirement afaik. The only thing is fuse needs a kernel module which is not built by default now that it has been included with the linux kernel (only the kernel module part of course, FUSE_FS in "File Systems" when building a kernel).

KnightHawk · 12-27-2007, 08:01 PM

How does that NTFS-3g work out anyway? I've been using for a few weeks now for reading NTFS partitions, but I'm still kinda scared if I write to them I'm gonna hose them.

Camarade_Tux · 12-28-2007, 04:44 AM

It works well. It has been tested over a really, really long period of time.
I use it myself mostly for my data partition (the one that is 12 times bigger than others ;p ) but also the windows ones and have no problem.
Approximately one month ago though I had to back up my data partition and did it with ftp over gigabit ethernet. Transfer rates were ranging from 15 to 25MB/s and at some point which was caracterized by many small files, I was surprized that they were not higher and top told me ntfs-3g was using almost all the cpu cycles it could. Transfer rates were still high but not as high as they could.
However I had no corruption, only a slowdown.

Camarade_Tux · 12-28-2007, 05:03 AM

Btw, I thought I could quote my source (and correct a statement) as well : from the linux kernel source, help for CONFIG_NTFS_RW,

Quote:

CONFIG_NTFS_RW:

This enables the partial, but safe, write support in the NTFS driver.

The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without
changing the file length. No file or directory creation, deletion or
renaming is possible. Note only non-resident files can be written to
so you may find that some very small files (<500 bytes or so) cannot
be written to.

While we cannot guarantee that it will not damage any data, we have
so far not received a single report where the driver would have
damaged someones data so we assume it is perfectly safe to use.

Note: While write support is safe in this version (a rewrite from
scratch of the NTFS support), it should be noted that the old NTFS
write support, included in Linux 2.5.10 and before (since 1997),
is not safe.

David1357 · 12-28-2007, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camarade_Tux

Btw, I thought I could quote my source (and correct a statement) as well : from the linux kernel source, help for CONFIG_NTFS_RW,

If I look at my config file in "/boot", I see that

Code:

CONFIG_NTFS_FS=m
# CONFIG_NTFS_RW is not set
CONFIG_FUSE_FS=m

and

Code:

[mymachine:~]:lsmod | grep fuse
fuse                   47124  3 
[sojourner2:~]:lsmod | grep ntfs
[sojourner2:~]:

So when I am mounting my NTFS partition, the fuse module must be handling everything.

Also, I can create files and directories on my NTFS partition, and I can increase the file sizes.

So, once again, I would recommend downloading the latest kernel sources, and building a shiny new kernel.

Camarade_Tux · 12-29-2007, 03:40 AM

I just meant to give the reason why the ntfs driver in the kernel did not let Twister write.

As for recompiling the kernel, there's no need to : that's really overkill and you'll still need to use the ntfs-3g command instead of mount.

(* short how-to for Twister512 *)
If you have ntfs support enabled in your kernel, then the following command would work but give a ro mount.

Quote:

root@A6T-nix:~# mount /dev/hdc5 /mnt/hdc5
mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'

Here I'm sure it won't because of "# CONFIG_NTFS_FS is not set" in my kernel config.

Quote:

root@A6T-nix:~# ntfs-3g /dev/hdc5 /mnt/hdc5
root@A6T-nix:~#

Quote:

root@A6T-nix:~# mount
/dev/hdc6 on / type xfs (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/hdc5 on /mnt/hdc5 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)

If the fuse kernel module is not present (default in slackware iirc), get [url=http://fuse.sourceforge.net/]fuse from sf[/ur], expand and run ./configure. Maybe the kernel module won't be enabled by default. If so, use ./configure --enable-kernel-module (or similar) then of course make && make install.
Now, get ntfs-3g, configure, make and make install.
Finally mount with "ntfs-3g <device> <mountpoint>".

I just think a whole kernel compile is unnecessary lengthy just to get ntfs write support especially since you'll need to install the fuse userspace tools and libs anyway.

David1357 · 12-29-2007, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camarade_Tux

I just think a whole kernel compile is unnecessary lengthy just to get ntfs write support especially since you'll need to install the fuse userspace tools and libs anyway.

I see a lot of Slackware posters clinging to old kernels, so I frequently suggest upgrading via building from source, because that is the way I like to do it.

However, I finally poked around on the Slackware site and I see that you can upgrade your kernel as a package. That would accomplish the same goal, presumably. Or are the Slackware folks dead set against enabling NTFS write support?

jfxg · 12-29-2007, 10:06 AM

on page 6 in the following HowTo it tells you how to download and install FUSE and NTFS-3g from SLACKBUILDS:

http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfec...op_slackware12

NTFS-3g has been used since at least 2.6.18 or 19, and is included in most distros that I've looked at. It works well and is easy to install with the scripts provided by SLACKBUILD.
hope this helps.