ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs

[Gene Czarcinski]

On Sunday 25 May 2008 15:07:52 drago01 wrote:
> well no .. you are wrong.
> ntfs-3g is a filesystem driver while ntfsprogs are tools to
> manage/create ntfs volumes.
> you are confusing ntfsprogs with in kernel ntfs driver ... which was
> never built in fedora/redhat kernels anyway.

I believe you are correct for distributions before Fedora 9.  Fedora 9 
includes ntfsprogs-2.0.0.  If you do "rpm -ql" for ntfsprogs and 
ntfsprogs-devel, you will see libraries and include files to support software 
development.  You might also look at the output of "rpm -q --provides" 
and "rpm -q --whatrequires" for the ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs packages (or do 
repoquery which may be better).

Yes, ntfsprogs has utilities which are not in ntfs-3g but (with 2.0.0), they 
also claim to have functionality and reliability to equal or exceed that in 
ntfs-3g.  See the ntfsprogs website  http://www.linux-ntfs.org/

Now granted, 2.0.0 of ntfsprogs was recently released may have some bugs or 
undesirable "features", so it may be prudent to keep ntfs-3g around for a 
while.  But, Fedora is, in many ways, a "bleeding edge" distribution.  Bugs 
will not be found and fixed unless someone uses the software.

I assume (mmmm ... I need to check this) that the utilities in ntfsprogs such 
as ntfsclone and ntfsresize use the libraries which are part of ntfsprogs 
rather than those in ntfs-3g. [checked: rpm and repoquery show no dependency 
between ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs]

I was a little surprised that there was no mention in the F9 Release Notes 
(just that anaconda now supported ntfs partition resizing).  But, on the 
other hand, there is not much (except anaconda and qtparted) which really 
requires the new ntfsprogs and developers (rightly) are more interested in 
the linux packages.

BTW, I find it convenient to have ntfsclone and ntfsresize on the F9 RescueCD 
(also called the network install cd).  ntfsclone together with "nc" and "ssh" 
provide a convenient way to backup an ntfs partition onto server storage 
(what else is large enough these days).

Gene