[ntfs-3g-devel] ntfs-3g-0.20061212-BETA

[Szakacsits S. <sz...@si...>]

Welcome,

Busy times, lots of exciting happenings!

Vista is out and we open source NTFS developers had to spend a considerable=
=20
amount of time in the last month to make sure we are handling Vista NTFS=20
correctly.

We had a very serious issue: Vista didn't boot after it was resized. All=20
versions of ntfsresize are affected, which also means most partitioners=20
(QTParted, GParted, Partition Logic, etc) and Linux installers. But we have=
=20
found the problem and a new version of ntfsresize is available now, which=
=20
can safely resize Vista NTFS too. This ntfsresize version is available as a=
=20
patch for ntfsprogs 1.13.1 and as a statically linked binary from the=20
Ntfsresize Frequently Asked Questions page:

        http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

and also from the ntfsprogs CVS:

        http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=3Dhowto:cvs

This release of the NTFS-3G driver also includes an important fix for=20
bigger than 4 kB cluster sizes.

Otherwise the driver seems to work very well reliability wise. In fact,=20
we have tracked down hardware problems, Microsoft NTFS driver problems,=20
and even an ALSA problem which all were believed originally to be NTFS-3G=
=20
faults.

There was another interesting event last month. November was the Month=20
of the Kernel Bugs:

        http://projects.info-pull.com/mokb/

It had a kernel NTFS driver denial of service attack:

        http://projects.info-pull.com/mokb/MOKB-19-11-2006.html

Let's see what happens in case of ntfs-3g in user space:

  # ntfs-3g MOKB-19-11-2006.img /mnt/test
  ntfs_pread: device seek to 0x1b80000004000 returned error: Invalid argume=
nt
  Error reading $MFT: Invalid argument
  Failed to load $MFT: Invalid argument
  Failed to startup volume: Invalid argument
  Failed to mount '/tmp/MOKB-19-11-2006.img': Invalid argument
  The device '/tmp/MOKB-19-11-2006.img' doesn't have a valid NTFS.

No denial of service. And we could even run unpriviledged and resource=20
restricted ;-)

NTFS-3G has a forum now, thanks to Dominique L Bouix and Auri Hautam=E4ki.
Check it out, send new questions or problems. Helping out new Linux users
would be also appreciated a lot:

        http://forum.ntfs-3g.org/

Csaba Henk is working on the FreeBSD port, and Max Khon also commited his=
=20
version onto the FreeBSD portage which is available for usage and testing=
=20
at

        http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/fusefs-ntfs/

There was no time for many changes in this ntfs-3g release but here are the
major or more important ones:

    * fix: directories were inaccessible on Windows if the cluster size
           was bigger than 4kB
    * fix: static linking failed with FUSE 2.6.0
    * fix: 'make install' failed if ldconfig wasn't in the $PATH
    * change: more verbose error reporting, hints for solutions

Contributors were Dominique L Bouix, Auri Hautam=E4ki, Kurt Radwanski, Pete=
r=20
Jones, Slavek, Klaus Knopper, Csaba Henk, Max Khon, Jan Vereecke, Miklos=20
Szeredi, Yuval Fledel and Yura Pakhuchiy.

The latest BETA driver can be downloaded from:

        http://www.ntfs-3g.org/index.html#download

Happy testing,
=09=09Szaka