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I don't know much about Linux, but I am trying to learn.

A couple of days ago I disconnected my normal drives from my server (P3-
1GB, 512MB, 815 chipset, SMC NIC, Realtek NIC, Promise IDE controller) and
connected a spare 40GB HDD and swapped the CD-ROM for a DVD-ROM. I
installed SuSE 9.3 from a DVD and all went well. All my hardware was
detected and worked OK. I setup the correct settings on the NIC with the
ADSL router attached and got the internet working.

This is for my home network, mainly for testing and learning.
The roles I had in mind for this server are:
Internet Proxy Server/firewall.
DHCP Server.
Mail Server.
File Server.

The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs. I
thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them automatically,
though it found them - it didn't mount them. I logged on as root and the
drives mounted OK, but in read only mode. I googled for help and
downloaded an application to let me mount NTFS with full read/write - but I
had no luck. So I decided to leave my experimenting for the day and boot
from my Win2003 Server HDD - only to find that both my 160GB and 250GB HDDs
had been corrupted. I tried several tools to repair the NTFS partitions,
but windows wouldn't see them as NTFS and I couldn't read them. None of
the data is critical (otherwise I would have backups), but I don’t really
want to try to replace the data (about 350GB) so I currently have Restorer
2000 recovering the data - which it is doing quite well.

My question is this:
Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid? Or is
there a way of doing this without the risk?

I could just get SuSE working for the other tasks, but not as a File
Server. Then if I am happy with SuSE and want to commit to it I could
setup my drives in the Linux format. Obviously this would involve copying
the data to another drive then letting Linux wipe the partition and create
a new one.

At the moment though I still want to experiment and don't want to stuff up
my Windows environment. There must be some Linux gurus here that have a
lot more experience with this than I do. What can you guys tell me?

--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 25-June-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

MarkH wrote:
> I don't know much about Linux, but I am trying to learn.
>
> A couple of days ago I disconnected my normal drives from my server (P3-
> 1GB, 512MB, 815 chipset, SMC NIC, Realtek NIC, Promise IDE controller) and
> connected a spare 40GB HDD and swapped the CD-ROM for a DVD-ROM. I
> installed SuSE 9.3 from a DVD and all went well. All my hardware was
> detected and worked OK. I setup the correct settings on the NIC with the
> ADSL router attached and got the internet working.
>
> This is for my home network, mainly for testing and learning.
> The roles I had in mind for this server are:
> Internet Proxy Server/firewall.
> DHCP Server.
> Mail Server.
> File Server.
>
> The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs. I
> thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them automatically,
> though it found them - it didn't mount them. I logged on as root and the
> drives mounted OK, but in read only mode. I googled for help and
> downloaded an application to let me mount NTFS with full read/write - but I
> had no luck. So I decided to leave my experimenting for the day and boot
> from my Win2003 Server HDD - only to find that both my 160GB and 250GB HDDs
> had been corrupted. I tried several tools to repair the NTFS partitions,
> but windows wouldn't see them as NTFS and I couldn't read them. None of
> the data is critical (otherwise I would have backups), but I don’t really
> want to try to replace the data (about 350GB) so I currently have Restorer
> 2000 recovering the data - which it is doing quite well.
>
> My question is this:
> Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid?

yes, like the plague. By default writing is experimental only and not
supported, mounting read only is OK.

Or is
> there a way of doing this without the risk?

Have a fat32 partition.

> I could just get SuSE working for the other tasks, but not as a File
> Server. Then if I am happy with SuSE and want to commit to it I could
> setup my drives in the Linux format. Obviously this would involve copying
> the data to another drive then letting Linux wipe the partition and create
> a new one.
>
> At the moment though I still want to experiment and don't want to stuff up
> my Windows environment. There must be some Linux gurus here that have a
> lot more experience with this than I do. What can you guys tell me?

I am not sure what you are asking....dual boot should not be an issue.
you can mount the ntfs partition read only and copy it into Linux
without a problem though permissions might need fiddling with.

Certianly Linux and samba can be a good fileserver for a small office.

regards

thing

thing2 wrote:
> MarkH wrote:
> > I don't know much about Linux, but I am trying to learn.
> >
> > A couple of days ago I disconnected my normal drives from my server (P3-
> > 1GB, 512MB, 815 chipset, SMC NIC, Realtek NIC, Promise IDE controller) and
> > connected a spare 40GB HDD and swapped the CD-ROM for a DVD-ROM. I
> > installed SuSE 9.3 from a DVD and all went well. All my hardware was
> > detected and worked OK. I setup the correct settings on the NIC with the
> > ADSL router attached and got the internet working.
> >
> > This is for my home network, mainly for testing and learning.
> > The roles I had in mind for this server are:
> > Internet Proxy Server/firewall.
> > DHCP Server.
> > Mail Server.
> > File Server.
> >
> > The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs. I
> > thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them automatically,
> > though it found them - it didn't mount them. I logged on as root and the
> > drives mounted OK, but in read only mode. I googled for help and
> > downloaded an application to let me mount NTFS with full read/write - but I
> > had no luck. So I decided to leave my experimenting for the day and boot
> > from my Win2003 Server HDD - only to find that both my 160GB and 250GB HDDs
> > had been corrupted. I tried several tools to repair the NTFS partitions,
> > but windows wouldn't see them as NTFS and I couldn't read them. None of
> > the data is critical (otherwise I would have backups), but I don't really
> > want to try to replace the data (about 350GB) so I currently have Restorer
> > 2000 recovering the data - which it is doing quite well.
> >
> > My question is this:
> > Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid?
>
> yes, like the plague. By default writing is experimental only and not
> supported, mounting read only is OK.

There is a driver call CAPTIVE that allows full NTFS rw active. It is
actually a wine based wrapper around the original windows drivers and
has shown to be totally stable.

Give that a try. I know of people using it with Suse.

Steve

"Steven Ellis" <> wrote in
news: oups.com:

>> MarkH wrote:
>> > The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs.
>> > I thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them
>> > automatically, though it found them - it didn't mount them. I
>> > logged on as root and the drives mounted OK, but in read only mode.
>> > I googled for help and downloaded an application to let me mount
>> > NTFS with full read/write - but I had no luck.
>
> There is a driver call CAPTIVE that allows full NTFS rw active. It is
> actually a wine based wrapper around the original windows drivers and
> has shown to be totally stable. I wonder if there is a way to use the
drivers from NTFS4DOS instead of the original windows drivers.

Yeah that was the app! I loaded Captive, but it didn't work. I don't know
if it was because I was using Win2003 server on the other drive or not, but
I got nowhere.

Maybe I would be better off getting the SuSE working OK for everything I
need and letting SuSE create the partitions on my HDDs. I only need NTFS
for as long as I want to use Win2003 Server on that PC. Once I have Linux
doing everything that I need from this PC then I can scrap Win2003
completely.

The next trick is getting Squid working to share my internet connection.

I might temporarily get my other 2 PCs to run the HDDs and share the files.
I definitely wont use my main drives for experimenting again, I'll take one
of my old 40GB HDDs formatted with NTFS and experiment with that on SuSE.


--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 25-June-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

MarkH wrote:
> I don't know much about Linux, but I am trying to learn.
>
> A couple of days ago I disconnected my normal drives from my server (P3-
> 1GB, 512MB, 815 chipset, SMC NIC, Realtek NIC, Promise IDE controller) and
> connected a spare 40GB HDD and swapped the CD-ROM for a DVD-ROM. I
> installed SuSE 9.3 from a DVD and all went well. All my hardware was
> detected and worked OK. I setup the correct settings on the NIC with the
> ADSL router attached and got the internet working.
>
> This is for my home network, mainly for testing and learning.
> The roles I had in mind for this server are:
> Internet Proxy Server/firewall.
> DHCP Server.
> Mail Server.
> File Server.
>
> The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs. I
> thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them automatically,
> though it found them - it didn't mount them. I logged on as root and the
> drives mounted OK, but in read only mode. I googled for help and
> downloaded an application to let me mount NTFS with full read/write - but I
> had no luck. So I decided to leave my experimenting for the day and boot
> from my Win2003 Server HDD - only to find that both my 160GB and 250GB HDDs
> had been corrupted. I tried several tools to repair the NTFS partitions,
> but windows wouldn't see them as NTFS and I couldn't read them. None of
> the data is critical (otherwise I would have backups), but I don’t really
> want to try to replace the data (about 350GB) so I currently have Restorer
> 2000 recovering the data - which it is doing quite well.
>
> My question is this:
> Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid? Or is
> there a way of doing this without the risk?
>
> I could just get SuSE working for the other tasks, but not as a File
> Server. Then if I am happy with SuSE and want to commit to it I could
> setup my drives in the Linux format. Obviously this would involve copying
> the data to another drive then letting Linux wipe the partition and create
> a new one.
>
> At the moment though I still want to experiment and don't want to stuff up
> my Windows environment. There must be some Linux gurus here that have a
> lot more experience with this than I do. What can you guys tell me?
>
From what I have red and seen Linux will read NTFS ok but could be
disastrious writing to NTFS,

In my Slackware system Only root has access at any stage to NTFS still
looking at the permissions

Somew people say full Read Wrte is Possibull I am in the don't know camp.

--
http://cooze.co.nz home of the RecyclerMan aka Robert Cooze

/ __/ / / / / /__ / / ___/ / __/ / / / |/ / /__ /
/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / _-' / __/ / / / /_/ / / /| / _-'
___\ ____/ ____/ /___/ /____/ /_/ ___\ ____/ /_/ /_/ |_/ /___/

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:46:49 GMT, MarkH <> wrote:

>My question is this:
>Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid? Or is
>there a way of doing this without the risk?

YES and NO

NTFS is not publically documented. Anyone trying to write their own
driver is flying blind, unless they use the NT DLLs.

Rob J wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:46:49 GMT, MarkH <> wrote:
>
>>My question is this:
>>Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid? Or is
>>there a way of doing this without the risk?
>
> YES and NO
>
> NTFS is not publically documented. Anyone trying to write their own
> driver is flying blind, unless they use the NT DLLs.

It is documented. Every time an NTFS partition gets written to
it leaves plenty of evidence of what is going on.
So I wouldn't call it "flying blind".

Reverse-engineering a filesystem is fairly simple, especially if
you have an understanding of Files-11, RSX, FAT, etc.
MS product are usually the easiest because MS tends to steal their
ideas from other well documented systems.

Harry <> wrote in
news::

> Rob J wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:46:49 GMT, MarkH <> wrote:
>>
>>>My question is this:
>>>Is using Linux with NTFS drives just one of those things to avoid?
>>>Or is there a way of doing this without the risk?
>>
>> YES and NO
>>
>> NTFS is not publically documented. Anyone trying to write their own
>> driver is flying blind, unless they use the NT DLLs.
>
> It is documented. Every time an NTFS partition gets written to
> it leaves plenty of evidence of what is going on.
> So I wouldn't call it "flying blind".
>
> Reverse-engineering a filesystem is fairly simple, especially if
> you have an understanding of Files-11, RSX, FAT, etc.
> MS product are usually the easiest because MS tends to steal their
> ideas from other well documented systems.

Well if this is true then I can only guess that the reason that there is
not full NTFS support automatically installed with all Linux distros is
that reverse-engineering the necessary parts and implementing them would
leave the software authors at risk of a lawsuit from MS for breach of
copyright or something.

I have temporarily solved the problem by throwing money at it - I have
bought a new 400GB SATA drive for my main PC which gives me room to copy
all data off my 160GB and 250GB drives, so I can reformat them with Linux
and copy the data back. I will probably go this way instead of wasting too
much time getting NTFS working with Linux. However, if I come across an
easier and more reliable way of getting NTFS to work with Linux, I may
experiment a little with an old 40GB NTFS drive. I really would like to be
able to connect an external USB2 HDD enclosure and copy data to and from an
NTFS disk - but at this stage I can do that with my WinXP PC.


--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 25-June-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

MarkH wrote:

> The next trick is getting Squid working to share my internet connection.

the squid.conf looks daunting but its not to bad.

http://www.thing.dyndns.org/debian/squid.htm

regards

thing

MarkH <> wrote in
news:dbyFe.663205$ m:

> I don't know much about Linux, but I am trying to learn.
>
> A couple of days ago I disconnected my normal drives from my server
> (P3- 1GB, 512MB, 815 chipset, SMC NIC, Realtek NIC, Promise IDE
> controller) and connected a spare 40GB HDD and swapped the CD-ROM for
> a DVD-ROM. I installed SuSE 9.3 from a DVD and all went well. All my
> hardware was detected and worked OK. I setup the correct settings on
> the NIC with the ADSL router attached and got the internet working.
>
> The problem came in when I connected my 160GB and 250GB data HDDs. I
> thought that SuSE would find the drives and mount them automatically,
> though it found them - it didn't mount them. I logged on as root and
> the drives mounted OK, but in read only mode. I googled for help and
> downloaded an application to let me mount NTFS with full read/write -
> but I had no luck. So I decided to leave my experimenting for the day
> and boot from my Win2003 Server HDD - only to find that both my 160GB
> and 250GB HDDs had been corrupted. I tried several tools to repair
> the NTFS partitions, but windows wouldn't see them as NTFS and I
> couldn't read them. None of the data is critical (otherwise I would
> have backups), but I don’t really want to try to replace the data
> (about 350GB) so I currently have Restorer 2000 recovering the data -
> which it is doing quite well.

Update:
All data was recovered and I deleted and recreated the partitions, then
I copied the data back. This was done with the 160GB in the original
machine, while a different machine worked on the 250GB. I then returned
the 250GB to the original machine and learned something important: The
Linux was not to blame for the corruption after all. It was the Promise
IDE controller which I bought several years ago - apparently just
booting to Windows with a drive >128GB connected is enough to stuff up
the NTFS partition on that drive. Now I am recovering the data again
from the 250GB, but the 160GB was connected to the M/board IDE and is
OK. Oh well, now I know the cause and how to avoid a future problem.

So the next step is to carefully test the Linux setup and get the NTFS
drives to work OK with full read/write (using a test 40GB initially), I
will retry with captive and see if I can find out which WinXP files it
wants so that I can copy them to the main SuSE drive.


Note:
Luckily I don't always have to learn things like this the hard way. But
without the occasional mistake I would probably get too full of myself,
I guess I am only 'almost' perfect.



--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 25-June-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"