[NTLUG:Discuss] mounting drives from other os

[Chris Cox]

MontyS at videopost.com wrote:
> Greetings.
> 
> Does any one know of an application (freeware/shareware or commercial) that
> allows the Linux user to mount NTFS or HFS+ firewire and/or usb drives to
> Linux?  The mount must be read/write to native format, must be able to see
> relatively large drives (250gig+) and must be STABLE.

No (for NTFS anyway).  Closest to navtive NTFS is "captive"
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/  Which might
work well for you.  But I'm not sure if it fits the "STABLE"
requirement.

> 
> Our production side is unix based.  What I am trying to acheive is the
> ability to mount a mac or pc firewire drive onto a linux box, then export it
> via nfs for read/write operations.

Hmmm... nfs has its own set of issues and really eliminates any benefit
of NTFS (for example) as the underlying filesystem.

You'd be better off exporting it via Samba.  Though there will still
be some limitations (even with 3.0 and 3.2).  Will require a bit
of work and only fixes things better for Windows.

Samba 4 will likely bring POSIX filesystems to Windows.  Then, finally,
we'll have filesystems that can be shared with all perms, acls, etc.
between truly open systems and Windows.


> 
> I have played with the HFS+ and NTFS kernel modules, but there are quite a
> few caveats that accompany them, mostly when it comes to writing.
> 
> Google has not been forthcoming.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Use FAT32 (again, no practical benefits to NTFS once shrouded with
NFS.. epecially NFS).  If we're talking just file storage... it's
pretty portable and more than enough for just files and dirs (in
most cases).  This allows you to use usb/firewire, direct attached,
or whatever.

Consider a NAS solution (something that talks SMB) and let this
be your abstraction layer (might as well use FAT32 though.. which
could be NAS or whatever).

Perhaps we need more information about what filesystem features
you need that made you think you had to have NTFS or HFS+.

Just some thoughts,
Chris