[ale] Antivirus LiveCD?

Byron A Jeff byron at cc.gatech.edu
Thu May 27 07:49:00 EDT 2004


On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 06:52:58AM -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> James P. Kinney III wrote:
> 
> >The mount showed as "rw" but root could not create nor delete a file.
> >I'll need to do some docs digging, but I'm assuming that the 'write'
> >option was not part of the NTFS module.
> 
> I do not believe that Linux can safely write to an NTFS filesystem as of 
> yet.

There are three NTFS drivers that each have different levels of write safety.

* NTFS v1 which is standard in the 2.4 kernel has no NTFS write safety. Use
  at your own risk.

* NTFS v2 which is standard in the 2.6 kernel only has safe overwrite safety
  on an existing file that cannot be extended. I know that seems limited but
  it does facilitate using NTFS for a loopback filesystem.

* Capture NTFS which hooks into the native Windows ntfs.sys. It has full write
  safety. However it's slower than molassas on a cold Vermont January night.
  It's so slow that it's close to being unusable.

Between NTFS v2 and Captive it's possible to fully interface to a NTFS system.
However neither by itself is truly acceptable.

BTW Knoppix 3.4 has all three drivers available. My students in my
Intermediate Unix class at Clayton State are currently examining how to get
Knoppix booted from a NTFS partition. So interfacing to NTFS filesystems is
at the top of the priority list.

BAJ



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