Re: [coLinux-devel] conoppix

[Gregory M. T. <gmt...@am...>]

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 06:25 pm, Digital Infra, Inc. wrote:
> I have not read whole thread (it is long!),
> but if what you focus is about writing a loop back partition,
> I already did it on conoppix.
>
> it can write loop back partition on NTFS.

I have not tried it, but considering that the built-in kernel NTFS write 
support had it's "experimental/dangerous" warnings removed from the help in 
Andrew Morton's recent 2.6 kernels, I am guessing that it will simply refuse 
to do anything dangerous, rather than destroying your filesystem... be warned 
that this advice is probably worth what you paid for it.

Anyhow, my educated guess is that if you create a non-compressed, 
non-encrypted large file using cygwin dd, filled with /dev/random data 
instead of /dev/zero (for extra paranoia about any spase-file issues) on an 
NTFS partition, it's totally safe to use linux's built-in NTFS "write" 
support and loop-devices to write to it, no captive NTFS required.  I have 
used this technique to fix unbootable colinux partitions successfully, at 
least.  I should document this technique in the wiki, I suppose...

> and probably next version of KNOPPIX has "captive",
> which loads genie NTFS.dll on Linux from c:/windows/system32,
> so you can write real NTFS, if you have real Windows installed on your C:.

captive NTFS is pretty nifty... makes you wonder about other drivers (I 
believe there has been some promising experimental work with NT display 
drivers and X as well).

-- 
gmt

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject
the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been
to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has
been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their
dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an
irresistible fate of despotism." --James Monroe