How to restore support for NTFS files > 4 GB with V7?

[Newbie_boy]

Please direct me to the correct forum if I am in the wrong place.

Was using Edison version. Installed FUSE support and mounted NTFS with mount -t ntfs-3g successfully. Soon found that large video files >4GB are truncated with no error message. Moved to mounting with mount -t ntfs with read only limitation, copied files to UFS and proceeded with success.

Upgraded with new install of Fibonacci version and was pleased to see integrated FUSE write support for NTFS. Except that now all NTFS files > 4GB are truncated without error message.

I believe this is an old issue that was corrected by moving to 64 bit code for NTFS drivers in FreeBSD version 6-STABLE. See "http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/73514". I am very inexperienced but I do not see any reference in the FUSE project to this problem.

My question is: How do I revert to the old read-only mounts used in the Edison version in the new version 7? I can live without the write access but would be in dire straights not having access to my camcorder DV captures created on XP machines. The original tapes have been reused after transferring so recapturing is not an option. It's probably simple; please pardon my inexperience. I would expect there is an option to do this in the mount command but I am not seeing it.

Newbie_boy

[Newbie_boy]

UPDATE!

I appear to have found a workaround. What I did is:

root@1# cd /sbin
root@1# mv mount_ntfs mount_ntfs_v7
root@1# mv mount_ntfs.orig mount_ntfs
root@1# mount -t ntfs /dev/ad0s1 /media/old120
root@1# mount
/dev/ad1s1 on / (ufs, local, soft-updates)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local)
linprocfs on /compat/linux/proc (linprocfs, local)
procfs on /proc (procfs, local)
/dev/md0 on /tmp (ufs, local)
/dev/ad0s1 on /media/old120 (ntfs, local)

I am now back to copying my video files previously captured on an XP machine to PC-BSD. It appears to be working. The key difference is that the FUSE driver no longer shows up for the mounted NTFS drive. My further question is:

Is this safe or am I inviting disaster? I am not knowlegeable enough to know if what I am doing is safe or not.

Newbie_boy

[TerryP]

Let me ask this question, where does 'mount_ntfs.orig' come from?

[Newbie_boy]

"Let me ask this question, where does 'mount_ntfs.orig' come from?"

It was sitting there in the /sbin directory with executable permission. Next to it is a script with the name 'mount_ntfs'. I merely guessed that the '.orig' version was the original command from FreeBSD that was replaced by the new script. If you check the man pages for mount it states that the 'mount -t ntfs' command calls '/sbin/mount_ntfs' as one of its actions. When I saw that the executable '/sbin/mount_ntfs' had been renamed with '.orig' appended I speculated that this was a way of marking the original FreeBSD file for mounting NTFS filesystems when the command was changed to use the FUSE driver. FUSE does provide write capability for NTFS filesystems, which is nice. But I was disappointed that the FUSE driver is still using 32 bit code (my speculation) for file length calculations, which appears to have brought back the 4GB file length limitation for NTFS files that was in FreeBSD in earlier versions.

Again, I am not qualified to really know if this is the case as I am new to Unix(like) on PCs.

[TerryP]

On a standard FreeBSD system, mount_ntfs is a binary:

Terry@dixie$ file /sbin/mount_ntfs                                        18:29
/sbin/mount_ntfs: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD), for FreeBSD 7.0 (700109), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), FreeBSD-style, stripped
Terry@dixie$                                                              18:31

PC-BSd does ship with the fuse based ntfs, but I don't recall any mention of them replacing the standard command with it.


The sysutils/fusefs-ntfs port should install /usr/local/bin/mount_ntfs-3g as a symbolic link to /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g, but does not replace /sbin/mount_ntfs on it's own accord.


If you can, try this:

$ cmp /sbin/mount_ntfs /usr/local/bin/mount_ntfs-3g
$ cmp /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig

the cmp command will give no output if the files are the same, otherwise it'll output a message about where they differ. If there is no mount_ntfs-3g, check for /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g instead. If /sbin/mount_ntfs is a shell script, open it in an editor and cmpthe binary it calls with ntfs-3g.


If /sbin/mount_ntfs is really ntfs3-g or calling it through a wrapper script -> I would file a bug report against PC-BSD.


The ntfs-3g port on FreeBSD is currently out of date, the port is v1.2531 but v1.5012 was released on 2008-10-12. So one would have to try the latest ntfs-3g to /fairly/ file a bug report with them about the 4GB issue.

[gwood]

Terry is right, but see /usr/local/share/doc/ntfs-3g/README.FreeBSD for more info.

This bug -- truncating files at 4gb -- should probably be reported to the ntfs-3g folks (listed in the README).

the script which replaced .orig is apparently meant to use HAL to figure out how to call ntfs-3g. See below for the comment at the start of that file.

Note that there seems to be an ongoing feud between the ntfs-3g folks (ntfs-3g.org) and the linux-ntfs folks (linux-ntfs.org). I'm not qualified to judge their products but BOTH are supported by FreeBSD:
fusefs-ntfs-1.2531 and ntfsprogs-2.0.0 respectively.

see cha0smaster's post in this thread for a taste of the dispute: http://forum.linux-ntfs.org/viewtopic.php?t=741

------------- what I see on my system ---------
This is from a vanilla pcbsd 7.0.1 amd64 installation:

[gwood@duet ~]$ which mount_ntfs-3g       
/usr/sbin/mount_ntfs-3g

[gwood@duet ~]$ file /usr/sbin/mount_ntfs-3g
/usr/sbin/mount_ntfs-3g: symbolic link to `/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g'

[gwood@duet ~]$ file /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (FreeBSD), for FreeBSD 7.0 (700112), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), FreeBSD-style, stripped

[gwood@duet ~]$ which mount_ntfs      
/sbin/mount_ntfs

[gwood@duet ~]$ file /sbin/mount_ntfs
/sbin/mount_ntfs: setuid setgid sticky Bourne shell script text executable

[gwood@duet ~]$ head -4 /sbin/mount_ntfs
#!/bin/sh
# Wrapper script for PC-BSD, which takes calls from HAL
# for running mount_ntfs, and performs it with ntfs-3g
#######################################################

[gwood@duet ~]$ file /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig 
/sbin/mount_ntfs.orig: setuid setgid sticky ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (FreeBSD), for FreeBSD 7.0 (700112), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), FreeBSD-style, stripped

[graedus]

Regarding the script swap suggested in this thread, in the 7.0.2 update you still need it to mount NTFS filesystems above 4gib, regrettably the developers haven't figured out how to implement it correctly with hal.

Regards.