Okay, I can tell by reading the threads that filesystem support has come up over and over again over the years, with the last relevant thread being around a year ago.  I am curious if anyone has made an add-on or anything that allows for r/w of NTFS, or exFAT, or ext3 at this point.  I have no interest in debating the relevance of using ReiserFS over the other flavors (although ZFS is damn sexy in a lot of ways).  But when I connect my USB drive that I bring home from work, I would like to be able to actually do more than read-only.  Windows 7 is particularly nasty towards non-MS file systems, so it makes a lot more sense for linux to have the compatibility to work with NTFS or exFAT.  In short, I'd like to be able to do a "mount -t ntfs" or "mount -t exfat" and it actually enable r/w mode.  Am I missing something?  Is there a wiki entry I missed while I was digging?

Okay, I can tell by reading the threads that filesystem support has come up over and over again over the years, with the last relevant thread being around a year ago.  I am curious if anyone has made an add-on or anything that allows for r/w of NTFS, or exFAT, or ext3 at this point.  I have no interest in debating the relevance of using ReiserFS over the other flavors (although ZFS is damn sexy in a lot of ways).  But when I connect my USB drive that I bring home from work, I would like to be able to actually do more than read-only.  Windows 7 is particularly nasty towards non-MS file systems, so it makes a lot more sense for linux to have the compatibility to work with NTFS or exFAT.  In short, I'd like to be able to do a "mount -t ntfs" or "mount -t exfat" and it actually enable r/w mode.  Am I missing something?  Is there a wiki entry I missed while I was digging?

Yes, you missed this entry in the wiki:

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Mounting_an_external_USB_drive_having_an_existing_NTFS_file_system_in_READ/WRITE_mode_to_transport_files_from/to_unRaid_server

 

Newest ntfs-3g driver install package is here:

ftp://slackware.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware-current/slackware/a/ntfs-3g-2010.3.6-i486-1.txz

 

Many improvements to be compatible with Win7 from the year old 2009.3.8 version listed in the wiki.

 

Then, you can mount as

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdX1 /mnt/your_mount_point

 

For ext3, mount as ext2.

mount -t ext2 .....

 

For exFAT, sorry, I can't help you there, never used one.

 

Joe L.

Perfect.  Thanks Joe.  Sorry for not being more diligent in my wiki searches. 

If you want your usb drive to mount and share automatically when you plug it in then use the add-on SNAP.  Currently it mounts ntfs read-only but you can change that very easily by editing the snap.sh script.  Just open the script and search for the mount command.

To figure out the right mount parameters I usually mount it once in unMenu because it shows the mount string - thanks Joe L.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904.0

If you want your usb drive to mount and share automatically when you plug it in then use the add-on SNAP.  Currently it mounts ntfs read-only but you can change that very easily by editing the snap.sh script.  Just open the script and search for the mount command.

To figure out the right mount parameters I usually mount it once in unMenu because it shows the mount string - thanks Joe L.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904.0

And if yo use one of our scripts to mount as read-only, as long as you are using the ntfs-3g driver, you can type

mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point

and your read-only disk will be writable.  Don't try this with the built-in ntfs driver, as it is 99% read-only (The built-in nfts driver can only write to existing files and cannot change the size of an existing file without corrupting something.). 

 

Only use mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point if you mounted the disk with the ntfs-3g driver.

 

Joe L

If you want your usb drive to mount and share automatically when you plug it in then use the add-on SNAP.  Currently it mounts ntfs read-only but you can change that very easily by editing the snap.sh script.  Just open the script and search for the mount command.

To figure out the right mount parameters I usually mount it once in unMenu because it shows the mount string - thanks Joe L.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904.0

And if yo use one of our scripts to mount as read-only, as long as you are using the ntfs-3g driver, you can type

mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point

and your read-only disk will be writable.   Don't try this with the built-in ntfs driver, as it is 99% read-only (The built-in nfts driver can only write to existing files and cannot change the size of an existing file without corrupting something.). 

 

Only use mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point if you mounted the disk with the ntfs-3g driver.

 

Joe L

 

Joe, is there any way to detect if the ntfs-3g driver is used?  I'd think about making SNAP smarter if I knew how to detect that.

If you type "mount" it will show "type fuseblk" for any mounted as ntfs-3g and any other filesystems under fuse.

If you want your usb drive to mount and share automatically when you plug it in then use the add-on SNAP.  Currently it mounts ntfs read-only but you can change that very easily by editing the snap.sh script.  Just open the script and search for the mount command.

To figure out the right mount parameters I usually mount it once in unMenu because it shows the mount string - thanks Joe L.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5904.0

And if yo use one of our scripts to mount as read-only, as long as you are using the ntfs-3g driver, you can type

mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point

and your read-only disk will be writable.   Don't try this with the built-in ntfs driver, as it is 99% read-only (The built-in nfts driver can only write to existing files and cannot change the size of an existing file without corrupting something.). 

 

Only use mount -o rw,remount /your_mount_point if you mounted the disk with the ntfs-3g driver.

 

Joe L

 

Joe, is there any way to detect if the ntfs-3g driver is used?  I'd think about making SNAP smarter if I knew how to detect that.

Since you are mounting the drive, I don't think you need do anything other than to use

mount -type ntfs-3g /dev/sdX1 /mnt/your_mount_point

 

You can detect if ntfs-3g is installed by looking for /bin/ntfs-3g

 

 

 

For finality sake I would like to confirm the procedure Joe outlined so patiently worked perfectly, and the Wiki entry is more than detailed.  If I were to do something like this on a more permanent basis I would probably go through the extra process of adding SNAP, but this was for a one time situation.  Thanks everyone.