While building my new PC I ran into an interesting problem trying to 
boot a live Linux CD - at least all of the ones I tried.

Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
currently not supported by most Linux distributions.

So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.



I found pendrivelinux.com that helped me with w very quick boot from USB 
solution.


Funny enough, it was the Knoppix screen shot that Andrew posted that I 
had been seeing for the past few days.


And all I wanted - fdisk

<sigh>




Tom

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:

> Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
> currently not supported by most Linux distributions.
> 
> So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
> everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.

Interesting...

My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many 
Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find 
the PATA ones just fine.

(I remember seeing "Marvell" and thinking "oo, that's what I have". But 
it isn't. I have a Marvell NIC. The IDE controller is nVidia.)

I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no idea 
which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
> 
>> Many motherboards are using the Marvell IDE controller - which is 
>> currently not supported by most Linux distributions.
>>
>> So while it starts booting fine, when it hands off to the kernel 
>> everything comes to a screeching halt because it cannot find the CD.
> 
> Interesting...
> 
> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many 
> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find 
> the PATA ones just fine.
> 
> (I remember seeing "Marvell" and thinking "oo, that's what I have". But 
> it isn't. I have a Marvell NIC. The IDE controller is nVidia.)
> 
> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no idea 
> which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
> 

That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
which one.

I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.


Tom

Post a reply to this message

>> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
>> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no 
>> idea which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
>>
> 
> That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
> which one.
> 
> I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
> issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.

IIRC, most live CDs failed to find either my harddrives or my NIC. To 
fix it, you have to say something like

   modprobe nv_forcedeth
   modprobe nv_sata

and then they both work again. I figured this out by searching several 
billion manpages, discovering where kernal modules (such as device 
drivers) are stored, and then listing the contents of the folder and 
looking for anything that sounded like it might work.

Hard to fix? No. User-friendly? No!

I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> I discovered that many if not most live CDs can be coaxed into seeing 
>>> the drives by manually executing a modprobe command. (No, I have no 
>>> idea which one... and it wouldn't help you anyway.)
>>>
>>
>> That's what I ran across - I just didn't have the energy to dig into 
>> which one.
>>
>> I guess I should learn it sometime as this PC is going to have this 
>> issue for a while and I plan on doing some fun Linux things with it.
> 
> IIRC, most live CDs failed to find either my harddrives or my NIC. To 
> fix it, you have to say something like
> 
>   modprobe nv_forcedeth
>   modprobe nv_sata
> 
> and then they both work again. I figured this out by searching several 
> billion manpages, discovering where kernal modules (such as device 
> drivers) are stored, and then listing the contents of the folder and 
> looking for anything that sounded like it might work.
> 
> Hard to fix? No. User-friendly? No!
> 
> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...
> 

I find that I can get into Linux fairly easily and remember quite a bit, 
but when i step back from the guts for a while I have to figure things 
out again.  Granted it all seems familiar and doesn't take as long, but 
it's hard to remember exactly what everything does when you mess with it 
once in a while.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:34:37 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...

It makes more sense as "forced eth", even though the idea of a module that  
forces death is somewhat amusing...

Apparently, the ambiguity is at least partially intentional.



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:

> I find that I can get into Linux fairly easily and remember quite a bit, 
> but when i step back from the guts for a while I have to figure things 
> out again.  Granted it all seems familiar and doesn't take as long, but 
> it's hard to remember exactly what everything does when you mess with it 
> once in a while.

I know what you mean...

At one time I installed Gentoo Linux. (As in, that Linux that doesn't 
come with an installer and has to be manually compiled from source and 
installed piece by piece.) Now I have _no clue_ how I did it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:
> And all I wanted - fdisk

What does fdisk give you that diskpart doesn't?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:12:22 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many
> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find
> the PATA ones just fine.

Weird, my HP system here has that same chipset on it, and the live discs 
do OK with it - SATA drive works beautifully with openSUSE 11.0 running 
on it, too.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> I know what you mean...
> 
> At one time I installed Gentoo Linux. (As in, that Linux that doesn't 
> come with an installer and has to be manually compiled from source and 
> installed piece by piece.) Now I have _no clue_ how I did it.
> 


I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.

While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the 
roots of what is going on.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>> And all I wanted - fdisk
> 
> What does fdisk give you that diskpart doesn't?
> 

I know how to use it and get to it easier than thru the XP recovery console.

I actually tried to get to it, but was prompted for an XP installation 
to recover before I got to a prompt that I could use.

I figured that at that point I would rather learn how to get Linux 
running on my machine because I plan on messing around with it later.



Tom

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:
> I know how to use it and get to it easier than thru the XP recovery 
> console.

Diskpart runs for me from the XP command line. Oh, I see what you mean. 
You had nothing at all on the machine. OK.

> I actually tried to get to it, but was prompted for an XP installation 
> to recover before I got to a prompt that I could use.

Yeah, I can see where that would slow you down. :-) BartPE is a good 
cure if you do that sort of thing regularly.

> I figured that at that point I would rather learn how to get Linux 
> running on my machine because I plan on messing around with it later.

Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.

I just thought there might have been functionality missing or something 
that I didn't know about in fdisk.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.

  Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all (maybe through
extensive hacking)? I know you can create recovery boot disks from Windows,
but if I'm not completely mistaken, those just basically create a DOS disk
with some text-based utilities. You *could* call that a "live CD", but
not really, IMO.

  Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
without permission. There really are certain situations where free
software does have its advantages.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.
> 
>   Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all (maybe through
> extensive hacking)?

Yes. It's not extensive hacking. It's a normal supported thing. They 
call it "Preinstall Environment."  You can buy it from Microsoft, or you 
can google for BartPE, which provides a free program that takes the 
files from the XP install disk and makes them bootable.

> You *could* call that a "live CD", but not really, IMO.

Nope. This is a full graphical environment and everything. Not the same 
as a Linux live-cd, as (for example) most services aren't running. But 
it's good enough for what I want to do, which is (for example) resize 
the system partition, or back up *everything* including the registry, etc.

>   Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> software does have its advantages.

This is true. But the program that takes your legal Windows CD and turns 
it into a live CD is free.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:

> I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.
> 
> While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the 
> roots of what is going on.

People say that about Gentoo too, but... watching pages of gibberish 
scroll past keeps you "in touch with the roots of it"? Hmm. Not so much...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...
> 
> It makes more sense as "forced eth", even though the idea of a module 
> that forces death is somewhat amusing...
> 
> Apparently, the ambiguity is at least partially intentional.

Well, "force" because it's the nForce 4 chipset. "eth" because it's the 
Ethernet interface. I have no idea what the "d" is for. ("Disassembled"? 
As in, they reverse-engineered a drives from the Windoze version?)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many
>> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all find
>> the PATA ones just fine.
> 
> Weird, my HP system here has that same chipset on it, and the live discs 
> do OK with it - SATA drive works beautifully with openSUSE 11.0 running 
> on it, too.

When I tried this, openSUSE 11.0 did not exist.

(IOW, now that it's no longer a brand new chipset, maybe drivers are 
more widely available.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> > limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> > without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> > software does have its advantages.

> This is true. But the program that takes your legal Windows CD and turns 
> it into a live CD is free.

  Another question is whether the Windows usage license allows you to do
that...

  Commerciality also makes it difficult to distribute projects like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikarunix

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all?

Yes.

My dad owns such a CD. It's Symantec Ghost. (The consumer version.) If 
you boot the CD, it loads Windows XP and allows you to perform Ghost 
restore operations.

Let me tell you: It runs SLOWER THAN MOLASSES! If you thought Linux live 
CDs were slow, you ain't seen nothing yet!

(You'll notice that the Ghost boot CD now no longer allows you to 
perform backups. ONLY restores. To perform a backup, you must "install" 
and "activate" the program over the Internet. But restore you can do 
using the boot CD. Presumably useful if you somehow break your Windoze 
installation and can't boot it to run Ghost...)

>   Of course even if Windows had full support, there's always the pesky
> limiation that it's commercial software which is illegal to distribute
> without permission. There really are certain situations where free
> software does have its advantages.

Absolutely.

I have nothing against having to pay for software. (I have several 
things against M$ products, but the fact that there's a fee isn't one of 
them.) But having to keep track of whether you're "allowed" to be doing 
what you're trying to do can be really which tricky and awkward - even 
if you're *trying* to stay within the law. When companies add features 
to try to "enforce" this, it always makes things more complex.

There is definitely a lot to be said for software that you can just 
*use*, however you feel like using it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
> 
>> I usually do a Linux From Scratch for most things.
>>
>> While I do the automated build, it at least keeps me in touch with the 
>> roots of what is going on.
> 
> People say that about Gentoo too, but... watching pages of gibberish 
> scroll past keeps you "in touch with the roots of it"? Hmm. Not so much...
> 


It isn't watching pages of gibberish - it's the few steps that aren't 
done automatically that does it for me.  And that's not selecting "go" 
either.

For me a typical LFS build consists of
fdisk
run LFS automated
setup grub
select kernel options & compile
setup boot scripts
pick which actual applications I want & manually install them


I agree that this isn't for everyone.
I have more interest in the guts than most people.
What I think I enjoy the most is learning how each application really 
works as I install it.  That way I know what my options are - instead of 
'just use this'.



Tom

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>> I know how to use it and get to it easier than thru the XP recovery 
>> console.
> 
> Diskpart runs for me from the XP command line. Oh, I see what you mean. 
> You had nothing at all on the machine. OK.
> 

yep - blank slate - was kinda nice.

>> I actually tried to get to it, but was prompted for an XP installation 
>> to recover before I got to a prompt that I could use.
> 
> Yeah, I can see where that would slow you down. :-) BartPE is a good 
> cure if you do that sort of thing regularly.
> 

I think I remember running across that a couple of years ago - Live 
Windows, but for some reason never pursued it.


>> I figured that at that point I would rather learn how to get Linux 
>> running on my machine because I plan on messing around with it later.
> 
> Yeah. And live CDs are certainly easier to find for Linux than Windows.
> 

but finding one that would boot on my machine.....

pendrivelinux is a pretty nifty site.

It's amazing what people are doing.
I wish I had that kind of time.....


> I just thought there might have been functionality missing or something 
> that I didn't know about in fdisk.
> 

probably not
DiskPart is a pretty powerful program.

I had to use it to set up hot-swap IDE on a Windows Server - along with 
a lot of other things.




Later... Tom

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> Nope. This is a full graphical environment and everything. Not the same 
> as a Linux live-cd, as (for example) most services aren't running. But 
> it's good enough for what I want to do, which is (for example) resize 
> the system partition, or back up *everything* including the registry, etc.
> 


One advantage of using a Live-Windows boot - you can actually do things 
with NTFS.


My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of friends.


Tom

Post a reply to this message

Tom Austin wrote:
> setup grub

Actually, I was wondering about that, and about booting in general.

The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem 
like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second step 
of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given the 
wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is allowed 
to be on in Linux.

How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot mechanism 
to find the files it needs? Is there something special, such that (say) 
copying the file to a different place on the disk would keep things from 
booting?

I know you don't have to do anything special if you move NTLDR around, 
but that could be a special case in the Windows file system code, I'd 
guess. (Maybe I'll try moving it with my live CD and see if stuff still 
boots. :-) Even if not, both FAT and NTFS are relatively easy to deal 
with, so I can imagine the code being sufficiently simple for a 
specifically-named file in the root directory.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Another question is whether the Windows usage license allows you to do
> that...

According to the BartPE page...

"""
Also, according to the Microsoft EULA for Windows XP/2003, a user may 
not simultaneously use more installations of these operating systems 
than the user has license(s) for.
"""

I.e., if you only run BartPE on machines for which you have a Windows 
license already, you shouldn't be violating the license. I'm not a 
lawyer, so I really couldn't say more than that.

Obviously, if you make a BartPE disk and boot it on half a dozen 
machines which you bought with Linux preinstalled, you're likely 
violating the license.

>   Commerciality also makes it difficult to distribute projects like this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikarunix

No doubt. (And yes, that's a pretty silly project. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Obviously, if you make a BartPE disk and boot it on half a dozen 
> machines which you bought with Linux preinstalled, you're likely 
> violating the license.

Hmmm... Unless you create it from an XP disk you never installed and 
therefore never agreed to the license for. That could be a curious 
situation.  (Altho, I *think* I remember BartPE asking me if I agreed to 
the XP license before it would make its copies. But that would seem easy 
to patch out of BartPE. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:57:43 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> My motherboard uses the nVidia nForce 4 chipset, and as a result many
>>> Linux live CDs can't see any of the SATA drives. However, they all
>>> find the PATA ones just fine.
>> 
>> Weird, my HP system here has that same chipset on it, and the live
>> discs do OK with it - SATA drive works beautifully with openSUSE 11.0
>> running on it, too.
> 
> When I tried this, openSUSE 11.0 did not exist.

Well, as Darren said, 3 months is an eternity in the Linux world.  :-)

> (IOW, now that it's no longer a brand new chipset, maybe drivers are
> more widely available.)

That most certainly is the case. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:53:14 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   Does Windows support creating so-called live CDs at all (maybe through
> extensive hacking)?

In a roundabout way, yes - BartPE is one that I've seen used for 
specialized applications like imaging.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:53:25 -0400, Tom Austin wrote:

> My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of
> friends.

ntfs-3g solves those issues.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:57:07 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> I still have no idea what "force deth" actually means...
>>  It makes more sense as "forced eth", even though the idea of a module  
>> that forces death is somewhat amusing...
>>  Apparently, the ambiguity is at least partially intentional.
>
> Well, "force" because it's the nForce 4 chipset. "eth" because it's the  
> Ethernet interface. I have no idea what the "d" is for.

Presumably "driver".


> ("Disassembled"? As in, they reverse-engineered a drives from the  
> Windoze version?)

The Linux version actually.


http://kerneltrap.org/node/1606



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:07:32 +0200, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem  
> like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second step  
> of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given the  
> wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is allowed  
> to be on in Linux.
>
> How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot mechanism  
> to find the files it needs? Is there something special, such that (say)  
> copying the file to a different place on the disk would keep things from  
> booting?


http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Bootstrap-tricks.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Images.html

I know from experience that moving stuff around on the boot partition can  
break GRUB.



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

>> The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem 
>> like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second 
>> step of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given 
>> the wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is 
>> allowed to be on in Linux.
>>
>> How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot mechanism 
>> to find the files it needs? Is there something special, such that 
>> (say) copying the file to a different place on the disk would keep 
>> things from booting?
> 
> 
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Bootstrap-tricks.html
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Images.html
> 
> I know from experience that moving stuff around on the boot partition 
> can break GRUB.

So the location of the real meat is hard-coded into the MBR. Neat...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> ("Disassembled"? As in, they reverse-engineered a drives from the 
>> Windoze version?)
> 
> The Linux version actually.
> 
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/1606

Ah. So there *is* a Linux driver, the guys just dislike closed-source 
drivers, so they wrote their own?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of
>> friends.
> 
> ntfs-3g solves those issues.

Several programs claim to "solve" these issues - with varying degrees of 
safety warnings. ;-)

(There are kernel NTFS drivers, there's a gizmo that loads NTFS.SYS from 
your Windoze partition and uses that, there are read-only NTFS drivers, 
and so on and so forth.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:46:19 +0200, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>  The Linux version actually.
>>  http://kerneltrap.org/node/1606
>
> Ah. So there *is* a Linux driver, the guys just dislike closed-source  
> drivers, so they wrote their own?

Presumably, though I do not actually know their motives.

Eventually nVidia started contributing to forcedeth, and a couple of years  
ago they dropped their own driver.


-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> The boot sector is really only part of one sector. That doesn't seem 
>>> like enough room to write code to find NTLDR or whatever the second 
>>> step of Linux boot code is (GRUB I assume, or LILO). Especially given 
>>> the wide range of partition types and RAID types a boot partition is 
>>> allowed to be on in Linux.
>>>
>>> How does it fit enough of the file system code into the boot 
>>> mechanism to find the files it needs? Is there something special, 
>>> such that (say) copying the file to a different place on the disk 
>>> would keep things from booting?
>>
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Bootstrap-tricks.html
>> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Images.html
>>
>> I know from experience that moving stuff around on the boot partition 
>> can break GRUB.
> 
> So the location of the real meat is hard-coded into the MBR. Neat...
> 


He beat me to it.

Yes, the MBR's job is only to load the real boot code.


I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what 
calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.

Those are calls that I could have access to to make my own boot junk.

I wish I had more time.....



Tom

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:56:01 +0200, Tom Austin <taustin> wrote:
> I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what  
> calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INT_13#INT_13h_AH.3D02h:_Read_Sectors_From_Drive



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

>> I've never dug enough into it, but I've always been interested in what 
>> calls the MBR has to make to load sectors and what not.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INT_13#INT_13h_AH.3D02h:_Read_Sectors_From_Drive 

Well, yeah, those are the BIOS calls to read sectors from a disk while 
in real mode. But then, once you've grabbed enough blocks from disk in 
real mode *then* you can worry about entering protected mode and 
initialising a real filesystem driver, etc.

BTW, I believe Grub supports booting *any* OS that complies with a set 
of simple guidelines. It isn't just limited to booting Linux. (Although 
it won't boot Windoze - but it can call the Windoze bootloader 
automatically.)

And yes, *I* wish I had more time...!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Ahem.  So did more than one person try out "some" live CD's and found several
wanting as far as hardware recognition and drivers?!?!!?

Please write up reviews on your blogs! Let the world know!  Linux distros, even
if they are free, are still in a "marketplace" for users.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:49:25 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> My understanding is that Linux and NTFS still aren't the best of
>>> friends.
>> 
>> ntfs-3g solves those issues.
> 
> Several programs claim to "solve" these issues - with varying degrees of
> safety warnings. ;-)
> 
> (There are kernel NTFS drivers, there's a gizmo that loads NTFS.SYS from
> your Windoze partition and uses that, there are read-only NTFS drivers,
> and so on and so forth.)

ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.  
I don't know that it comes with a bunch of warnings, but of course using 
closed code with Linux is going to get people to give "warnings" about 
the difficulty in solving problems should they arise.

But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things 
can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.

Either that, or I imagined the gradual corruption on a coworkers machine 
a few weeks ago. :-)

Jim

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.  

Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to 
laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is 
necessary to understand how something works. :-)

> But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things 
> can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.

What surprises me is that there's anything on the file system that can 
grow without bound. But as I understand it, at least the security 
descriptors (i.e., the ACLs) can get put in a hash table and never 
removed. Seems odd.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New wrote:

> Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to 
> laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is 
> necessary to understand how something works. :-)

It's also not necessary to understand how something works just to use it 
s public interface. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:35:16 -0400, gregjohn wrote:

> Ahem.  So did more than one person try out "some" live CD's and found
> several wanting as far as hardware recognition and drivers?!?!!?
> 
> Please write up reviews on your blogs! Let the world know!  Linux
> distros, even if they are free, are still in a "marketplace" for users.

Not sure why you wrote this back to me - I was just commenting that 
ntfs-3g solves the issues with native NTFS solutions in the Linux kernel.

Jim

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On Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:34:01 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> ntfs-3g is what uses ntfs.sys - and that one is very stable and usable.
> 
> Is that how it works? That's rather ... baroque. I'm going to have to
> laugh next time someone tells me that having the source code is
> necessary to understand how something works. :-)

I believe that's how it works - much like how ndiswrapper can be used to 
use Windows WLAN drivers on Linux.

But using a closed-source driver doesn't mean you have any idea how it 
works, just how to interface with it - and that's what reverse 
engineering is for.

>> But there's *always* risk to using ntfs.sys even with Windows - things
>> can go wrong even in a native Windows environment.
> 
> What surprises me is that there's anything on the file system that can
> grow without bound. But as I understand it, at least the security
> descriptors (i.e., the ACLs) can get put in a hash table and never
> removed. Seems odd.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Jim

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