7 ms·

Everyone (on Reddit at least) seems to be yakking away at whether Paragon Software is good or bad and what other things they've done. I just wanna know if this

by ufmace 6y ago

Everyone (on Reddit at least) seems to be yakking away at whether Paragon Software is good or bad and what other things they've done. I just wanna know if this driver is actually good or bad. Far as I know, a Linux NTFS driver capable of writing has been a long time coming.

loeg 6y ago
So far, signs are not super positive: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87h7t5454n.fsf@suse.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87h7t5454n.fsf@suse.com/
- hannob 6y ago
  This sounds like "yeah, it has bugs that need to be fixed", not fundamental reasons not to merge it. (Though I think they should've tested with KASAN+KUBSAN before submitting.)
  - loeg 6y ago
    Sure, bugs can be fixed. The bugs are one reason not to merge this iteration of the patchset. I don't dispute that it could eventually be polished into something worth merging. (The second bug in the email linked above is a NULL ptr deref during an in-order recursive directory copy into the volume. That is real basic stuff; I don't think it required ASAN/UBSAN to hit. It shows a lack of even relatively basic testing, if I understand correctly.)
  - kelnos 6y ago
    If a tester can't simply create a volume, mount it, and copy a directory tree into it without encountering a null pointer dereference, this to me raises serious questions about how this driver is tested and the lack of care in building it.
bayesianbot 6y ago
I've been writing to my NTFS volume for around 5-10 years I think, out of the box with Linux Mint. (Or maybe an extra package from apt-get, not 100%). Extra options needed and possible data loss when writing used to be a thing, but a long time ago.
- awild 6y ago
  You're probably using ntfs3g which is separately installed.
  - app4soft 6y ago
    > You're probably using ntfs3g which is separately installed. Not sure about Linux Mint, but MX Linux & antiX has NTFS driver bundled into ISO-images.
Soulsbane 6y ago
I've been able to read/write NTFS for years via NTFS-3G. Am I missing something? Check it out if you haven't already.
- Fronzie 6y ago
  This is about a kernel-space driver, as opposed to a FUSE (user space) driver. It should allow for better performance.
lizknope 6y ago
I've been writing to NTFS for at least 10 years. It was the FUSE driver but it worked fine and I never had any problem other than it seemed to write at half the speed of ext4
- speedgoose 6y ago
  NTFS is super slow on windows too. You get better performances with ext4 on WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux).
  - risho 6y ago
    how is this possible? isn't wsl 2 literally a virtual machine image on top of your ntfs drive?
    - speedgoose 6y ago
      Yes but it's only one big file, the ext4 partition.
      - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
        And to extend, Windows/NTFS is not particularly slow at accessing a large file (actually, until recently they have been ahead for async read/write into big files), the area where they really suck is anything that has anything to do with metadata.
        formerly_proven 6y ago
        I've been told this has to do with NTFS using a complicated metadata scheme and also all permissions in NTFS being backed by a complex ACL-security-descriptor scheme. Is that an accurate representation?
        Tuna-Fish 6y ago
        I don't believe it is. Windows metadata performance is not just bad, it's so bad it beggars belief. I don't believe the root cause is any specific technical decision, but rather that no-one cares about it. It has always been so bad that no-one can count on it, so no-one depends on it, so it's something that can safely be ignored. On Linux, and other unices, there have always been important workloads where it really matters, so that itch got scratched.
binwiederhier 6y ago
We have licensed this driver and the fsck-like tool. The driver was deployed to 65,000 Ubuntu-based servers (as far as I remember), but we had a ton of issues with it, to the point that we removed it entirely and went back to NTFS-3g. We were told by paragon that we used a too-old version but at that point we had already moved on. However, their NTFS check tool that ships with the driver (I forgot the name, but I can dog it up if anyone is interested) is actually super awesome! It is so so so much better than even the Windows chkdsk tool itself, and corrects many more issues. We use it to fix NTFS errors in millions of backup images. Can highly recommend! Hope this helps.
- captn3m0 6y ago
  ntfsfix?
microcolonel 6y ago
The way most people use NTFS on Linux is through ntfs-3g, that's why the situation in the kernel has been tolerated so long.

by ufmace 6y ago

loeg 6y ago

So far, signs are not super positive: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87h7t5454n.fsf@suse.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/87h7t5454n.fsf@suse.com/

hannob 6y ago
This sounds like "yeah, it has bugs that need to be fixed", not fundamental reasons not to merge it. (Though I think they should've tested with KASAN+KUBSAN before submitting.)
- loeg 6y ago
  Sure, bugs can be fixed. The bugs are one reason not to merge this iteration of the patchset. I don't dispute that it could eventually be polished into something worth merging. (The second bug in the email linked above is a NULL ptr deref during an in-order recursive directory copy into the volume. That is real basic stuff; I don't think it required ASAN/UBSAN to hit. It shows a lack of even relatively basic testing, if I understand correctly.)
- kelnos 6y ago
  If a tester can't simply create a volume, mount it, and copy a directory tree into it without encountering a null pointer dereference, this to me raises serious questions about how this driver is tested and the lack of care in building it.

bayesianbot 6y ago

I've been writing to my NTFS volume for around 5-10 years I think, out of the box with Linux Mint. (Or maybe an extra package from apt-get, not 100%). Extra options needed and possible data loss when writing used to be a thing, but a long time ago.

awild 6y ago
You're probably using ntfs3g which is separately installed.
- app4soft 6y ago
  > You're probably using ntfs3g which is separately installed. Not sure about Linux Mint, but MX Linux & antiX has NTFS driver bundled into ISO-images.

Soulsbane 6y ago

I've been able to read/write NTFS for years via NTFS-3G. Am I missing something? Check it out if you haven't already.

Fronzie 6y ago
This is about a kernel-space driver, as opposed to a FUSE (user space) driver. It should allow for better performance.

lizknope 6y ago

I've been writing to NTFS for at least 10 years. It was the FUSE driver but it worked fine and I never had any problem other than it seemed to write at half the speed of ext4

speedgoose 6y ago
NTFS is super slow on windows too. You get better performances with ext4 on WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux).
- risho 6y ago
  how is this possible? isn't wsl 2 literally a virtual machine image on top of your ntfs drive?
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    Yes but it's only one big file, the ext4 partition.
    - Tuna-Fish 6y ago
      And to extend, Windows/NTFS is not particularly slow at accessing a large file (actually, until recently they have been ahead for async read/write into big files), the area where they really suck is anything that has anything to do with metadata.
      - formerly_proven 6y ago
        I've been told this has to do with NTFS using a complicated metadata scheme and also all permissions in NTFS being backed by a complex ACL-security-descriptor scheme. Is that an accurate representation?
        Tuna-Fish 6y ago
        I don't believe it is. Windows metadata performance is not just bad, it's so bad it beggars belief. I don't believe the root cause is any specific technical decision, but rather that no-one cares about it. It has always been so bad that no-one can count on it, so no-one depends on it, so it's something that can safely be ignored. On Linux, and other unices, there have always been important workloads where it really matters, so that itch got scratched.

binwiederhier 6y ago

We have licensed this driver and the fsck-like tool. The driver was deployed to 65,000 Ubuntu-based servers (as far as I remember), but we had a ton of issues with it, to the point that we removed it entirely and went back to NTFS-3g. We were told by paragon that we used a too-old version but at that point we had already moved on. However, their NTFS check tool that ships with the driver (I forgot the name, but I can dog it up if anyone is interested) is actually super awesome! It is so so so much better than even the Windows chkdsk tool itself, and corrects many more issues. We use it to fix NTFS errors in millions of backup images. Can highly recommend! Hope this helps.

captn3m0 6y ago
ntfsfix?

microcolonel 6y ago

The way most people use NTFS on Linux is through ntfs-3g, that's why the situation in the kernel has been tolerated so long.