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1
2INTRODUCTION
3============
4
5The NTFS-3G driver is an open source, freely available read/write NTFS driver
6for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX and Haiku. It provides
7safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000,
8Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 file systems.
9
10The purpose of the project is to develop, quality assurance and support a
11trustable, featureful and high performance solution for hardware platforms
12and operating systems whose users need to reliably interoperate with NTFS.
13Besides this practical goal, the project also aims to explore the limits
14of the hybrid, kernel/user space filesystem driver approach, performance,
15reliability and feature richness per invested effort wise.
16
17Besides the common file system features, NTFS-3G has support for file
18ownership and permissions, POSIX ACLs, junction points, extended attributes
19and creating compressed files. Parameter files in the directory .NTFS-3G may
20be required to enable them, please get the instructions from
21
22 http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-advanced/
23
24News, support answers, problem submission instructions, support and discussion
25forums, performance numbers and other information are available on the project
26web site at
27
28 http://www.tuxera.com/community/
29
30
31QUICK INSTALLATION
32==================
33
34Linux: Make sure you have the basic development tools and the kernel includes
35the FUSE kernel module. Then unpack the source tarball and type:
36
37 ./configure
38 make
39 make install # or 'sudo make install' if you aren't root.
40
41Please note that NTFS-3G doesn't require the FUSE user space package any
42more.
43
44The list of options for building specific configurations is displayed by
45typing :
46
47 ./configure --help
48
49Below are a few specific options to ./configure :
50 --disable-ntfsprogs : do not build the ntfsprogs tools,
51 --enable-posix-acls : enable support for Posix ACLs
52 --enable-xattr-mappings : enable system extended attributes mappings
53 --with-fuse=external : use external fuse (overriding Linux default)
54
55There are also a few make targets for building parts :
56 make libntfs : only build the libntfs-3g library
57 make libs : only build libntfs-3g (and libfuse-lite, if relevant)
58 make drivers : only build drivers and libraries, without ntfsprogs
59 make ntfsprogs : only build ntfsprogs and libntfs-3g, without drivers
60
61Non-Linux: Please see
62
63 http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
64
65for known OS specific installation and source packages, but generally
66the same procedures apply.
67
68USAGE
69=====
70
71If there was no error during installation then the NTFS volume can be
72read-write mounted for everybody the following way as the root user
73(unmount the volume if it was already mounted, and replace /dev/sda1
74and /mnt/windows, if needed):
75
76 mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
77or
78 ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
79
80Please see the ntfs-3g manual page for more options and examples.
81
82You can also make NTFS to be mounted during boot by putting the below
83line at the END(!) of the /etc/fstab file:
84
85 /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
86
87
88TESTING WITHOUT INSTALLING
89=========================
90
91Newer versions of ntfs-3g can be tested without installing anything and
92without disturbing an existing installation. Just configure and make as
93shown previously. This will create the scripts ntfs-3g and lowntfs-3g
94in the src directory, which you may activate for testing :
95
96 ./configure
97 make
98
99then, as root :
100 src/ntfs-3g [-o mount-options] /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
101
102And, to end the test, unmount the usual way :
103 umount /dev/sda1
104
105
106NTFS UTILITIES
107==============
108
109The ntfsprogs includes utilities for doing all required tasks to NTFS
110partitions. In general, just run a utility without any command line
111options to display the version number and usage syntax.
112
113The following utilities are so far implemented:
114
115ntfsfix - Attempt to fix an NTFS partition and force Windows to check NTFS.
116
117mkntfs - Format a partition with the NTFS filesystem. See man 8 mkntfs for
118command line options.
119
120ntfslabel - Display/change the label of an NTFS partition. See man 8 ntfslabel
121for details.
122
123ntfsundelete - Recover deleted files from an NTFS volume. See man 8
124ntfsundelete for more details.
125
126ntfsresize - Resize NTFS volumes. See man 8 ntfsresize for details.
127
128ntfsclone - Efficiently create/restore an image of an NTFS partition. See
129man 8 ntfsclone for details.
130
131ntfscluster - Locate the owner of any given sector or cluster on an NTFS
132partition. See man 8 ntfscluster for details.
133
134ntfsinfo - Show some information about an NTFS partition or one of the files
135or directories within it. See man 8 ntfsinfo for details.
136
137ntfsls - List information about files in a directory residing on an NTFS
138partition. See man 8 ntfsls for details.
139
140ntfscat - Concatenate files and print their contents on the standard output.
141
142ntfscp - Overwrite files on an NTFS partition.
143