Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 19:08:44 +0000
From: Anton Altaparmakov aia21@cam.ac.uk
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Linux-NTFS project, first public release
This is to announce the first public release of the Linux-NTFS
project hosted on sourceforge. The project page, where you can
download the source code tar ball or rpm as well as precompiled
RPMs for RedHat Linux 7.0 (i386 architecture only), is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/
You can also use the CVS server if you prefer…
Note, that you need the kernel headers installed to compile
linux-ntfs source (probably you will need 2.4.x kernel headers and
not 2.2.x ones but I haven’t actually checked whether it works with
2.2.x or not).
The first release contains the all new and wonderful ntfsfix
utility, which repairs some of the damage that the current Linux
NTFS driver does when writing to an NTFS partition.
If you are doing any writing to NTFS partitions using the Linux
NTFS driver this is an absolute *MUST* at the present time. It
won’t solve all problems, but it goes quite some way to prevent
data corruption.
Run it after dismounting your NTFS partition in Linux but before
rebooting into Windows NT/2000.
Note, after running the utility, when Windows boots up it will
run an automatic chkdsk on the partition which will finish fixing
the damage done by the Linux NTFS driver without corrupting the
written data or any other data (as long as the Linux NTFS driver
hasn’t corrupted something beyond repair, obviously).
For amusement value, the first release also includes the
ntfsdump_logfile utility which when used on an NTFS partition will
display information about the journal ($LogFile) of that
partition.
Finally both these utilities make use of the also included NTFS
library which offer NTFS access to open source programs. It is
currently under heavy development and the API is not going to
remain as it is so don’t use it yet for your own programs.
For everyone interested in NTFS on-disk structures and
functionality, you will find the doc directory and especially the
include directory to be of great interest as the later includes
header files with all known to me NTFS structures. I still haven’t
gone through all the NTFS information that is available so they are
considered work in progress but are fairly complete I thing. Most
people will probably find that the $LogFile structures have never
been published before anywhere and now we have the restart area
structure definitions.
Any problems compiling/running the utilities, just give me a
shout, or even better submit bug reports on the project page!
Enjoy!
Anton