7 ms·

Related tangent: Something I don't fully understand (perhaps I just haven't found a project that facilitates it) is why there isn't a Windows extension (driver?

Related tangent: Something I don't fully understand (perhaps I just haven't found a project that facilitates it) is why there isn't a Windows extension (driver?) that allows for native mounting of ext4 partitions within Windows explorer. Surely, given the Linux native file system is open source, adding the ability to mount ext4 partitions natively should be something people can add to Windows? I have seen third party applications with custom file explorers that can open ext4 partitions (in the same way you open a 7zip file) and I also understand you can mount linux partitions via WSL to access them via explorer - I would just love it if there was a way to natively mount ext4 in the Windows shell. Up until now I have been using NTFS as my "universal" format - for drives shared between Windows, Linux and MacOS. I think exfat has recently gained support in all three platforms but it's not reliable for an internal hard drive (I think?).

p_l 4y ago
There used to be an ext2 driver for NT, I think opensource even, but there simply had not been enough interest to keep it updated or built for newer versions
dale_glass 4y ago
> Related tangent: Something I don't fully understand (perhaps I just haven't found a project that facilitates it) is why there isn't a Windows extension (driver?) that allows for native mounting of ext4 partitions within Windows explorer. Such projects have long existed, but I suspect there's a lack of interest. It's a difficult technical problem with a narrow usage niche. You need somebody who wants both Windows and Linux, and wants to use the same physical disks. Today, why bother? You can use a NAS, cloud storage, virtualization, etc.
- leoc 4y ago
  Wanting to dual-boot sometimes isn't that rare, surely. And local storage for documents remains popular too. It seems to reflect the reality that serious Linux development effort has been very server-focussed for a long time.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    These days probably quite rare, except for gaming. Virtualization is far more convenient.
    - kaetemi 4y ago
      Yeah, if you're going to exclude the common use cases, obviously it's going to be rare. (: People still use local storage. (I'd also like native ext4 support in Windows.)
      - dale_glass 4y ago
        Yeah, but when I boot Windows for gaming, I don't care about sharing data with Linux. And given the availability of cloud storage, I can just upload whatever little I need to share.
        mst 4y ago
        Not all dual boot systems are "main OS" plus "wintendo." Quite a lot of the ones I encounter on personal machines are, certainly, but people doing actual dev stuff on both is still a use case.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      Valve is working hard to change that.
    - itsboring 4y ago
      Used to dual boot, but with the combo of steam/proton and VFIO passthrough + looking glass, it’s been really solid to just run both at the same time. File sharing between the two is pretty easy in that case, because it’s just the usual rsync/scp tools or SMB share. Although, I’ve found I very rarely need the guest for gaming anymore, more so for opening the odd Photoshop file and similar tasks.
      - checkyoursudo 4y ago
- watmough 4y ago
  Back in the day, and I mean like mid-late 90's, you could actually install the Linux kernel, files etc., straight onto a Windows FAT partition and boot into it. Not exactly what was being asked for, but a weird old fact I'd forgotten about.
  - progman32 4y ago
    There was a distribution called WinLinux that did this, iirc. Installed like a normal piece of windows software. Was my first foray into unices when I was a young kid. There were some fun games in that distro!
  - fdr 4y ago
    Sometime in the early 2000s, when microarchitectural features for virtualization were rare, I used coLinux in a working capacity. It has a design was amazing at how well it worked given the constrained size of the code changes. In short, it ran a copy of Linux in supervisor mode in addition to Windows (this is the "driver mode"). At the same time. Both in supervisor mode. As a giant coroutines yielding to one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Linux http://www.colinux.org/publications/Reprint-Aloni-OLS2004.pdf http://www.colinux.org/publications/Reprint-Aloni-OLS2004.pd...
    - lta 4y ago
      A friend of mine has been using this setup for a very long time do be able to write music and work on the same station. I remember I was amazed at how solid the thing was. Does anyone know if there's a relationship between colinux and how ms eventually ended up implementing wsl ?
      - fdr 4y ago
        Not so much. WSL1 was a too-audacious attempt to implement enough Linux-style system calls in Windows to run Linux software. Which it did surprisingly well, considering...but also, often strangely, and slowly. I think the name is a bit ironic, since the whole idea is to avoid using any Linux code in Windows, but implementing system calls so that the non-Linux parts of a Linux distribution could pretend Windows was Linux. GNU/Windows-pretending-to-be-Linux, as it were. WSL2 is virtualization-based, so it could be seen as more comparable to Docker's installation package as seen on non-Linux platforms, or Parallels: a somewhat elaborate attempt to improve the virtualization experience in interoperation with the host, e.g. setting up NAT, network file systems, or installing special drivers. I don't think coLinux offers as much as it did, now that virtualization micro-architectural features are routinely available. At least one part of coLinux that took up quite a bit of its code was special drivers to interface with the host OS. This code would still be useful and has parallels in current approaches, but the decisive trick of toggling between two kernels running in supervisor mode has less room to be useful. Also, you could only imagine the difficulty of identifying the origin of bugs in that set-up.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Or just using NTFS since Linux now has good support for it.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  The niche surely ain't that narrow, especially as Linux-based devices like Raspberry Pis and Steam Decks grow in popularity; being able to ready EXT-formatted SD cards and such seems like it'd be valuable even from Windows.
- lasftew 4y ago
  It might be convenient, but it is also more complex than just being able to read file systems. External disks or partitions containing data in particular will / should always be fully encrypted nowadays, so you'd need interoperability of disk encryption schemes as well (dmcrypt, bitlocker). NAS can handle that transparently.
- arglebargle123 4y ago
  Now that the new NTFS3 driver is out in the wild there's also not much need. The number of people who boot windows and need to access an ext4 partition is tiny compared to the number of people booting Linux who need to access NTFS.
viraptor 4y ago
Paragon has been doing it for quite a while. You just need to pay extra. https://www.paragon-software.com/business/extfs-for-windows/ https://www.paragon-software.com/business/extfs-for-windows/
- mukesh610 4y ago
  Don't use this. I once tried it and it changed the UUID of the Linux partition without any warning. Grub was unable to pick up the partition and boot, so I was stuck at grub rescue. God knows what other bugs their software has.
- gfody 4y ago
  contact Sales for a quote. I guess the price depends on how many files you plan on storing?
  - smw 4y ago
    $20 if you're a home user?
  - chronogram 4y ago
    That's the business page, the home user page shows €19,95 for me.
hackmiester 4y ago
> I think exfat has recently gained support in all three platforms but it's not reliable for an internal hard drive (I think?). I've been doing this for a few years now. It just doesn't support some stuff, like permissions, but for just a pile of files, it's fine.
- toastal 4y ago
  No symlinks, no transparent compression… there's quite a few mission things
  - toastal 4y ago
    Missing*
  - hackmiester 4y ago
    I haven't stubbed my toe on the former yet, but I agree it's not great. I'm mainly storing media, photos, etc. (relatively not compressible) so the latter doesn't matter much to me. I think that's probably a common use case for a drive you can read anywhere, so I still like ExFAT for that, generally speaking.
    - toastal 4y ago
      Is the performance decent for the ‘cost’ of lacking features?
      - hackmiester 4y ago
        I would say yes, but I'm not pushing it exceptionally hard. I would say it makes a good default unless/until you run into a problem with it.
hyperdimension 4y ago
To your last point: try UFS! I use it for cross-platform flash drives. Better than FAT32, anyway.
- cpach 4y ago
  I guess you’re referring to Universal Flash Storage rather than Unix File System? (:
  - SSLy 4y ago
    Maybe UDF?
    - efrecon 4y ago
      Probably. Last time I check UDF is a format supported by the 3 major OSes out of the box.
      - yyyk 4y ago
        I recall getting UDF cross compatibility required a bit of non-trivial work[0], did this improve recently? [0] https://github.com/JElchison/format-udf https://github.com/JElchison/format-udf
    - hyperdimension 4y ago
      Yeah, UDF. UFS won't get you terribly far with cross-platform support... Thank you.
csdvrx 4y ago
> I think exfat has recently gained support in all three platforms but it's not reliable for an internal hard drive (I think?). It's not, and recovery tools are still lacking. Keep using NTFS for now.
- JonathonW 4y ago
  exfat’s reliability “issues” are by design— it’s not journaled, to simplify implementation (and reduce resource use) on embedded devices and reduce wear on flash media. It’s not a replacement for NTFS in applications where it’s already being used (large disks, anything where important data is being stored). Rather, it’s a modernized replacement for FAT32 for things like camera memory cards, eliminating some of FAT32’s limitations (like the file size limit) while remaining similarly lightweight.
bstar77 4y ago
It's entirely due to Microsoft's hubris.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Yeah. Screw Microsoft for not supporting a file system with a rounding error desktop user base.
  - aruggirello 4y ago
    Microsoft didn't support ext because too few people were using it to justify the effort, yet somehow they went to great lengths and implemented the whole WSL, and... ~twice at that - for a possibly smaller user base?
throwaway894345 4y ago
Pretty sure there isn’t an ext4 spec, it’s just the reference implementation. Microsoft could build something that is compatible, but keeping compatibility as the reference implementation changes may not be straightforward.
- haileys 4y ago
  The counterpoint to this is that ext4 can't change dramatically enough to cause problems without breaking compatibility with older kernels or older filesystems.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    Certain features (like case-insensitivity) already do break compatibility, as I found out the hard way trying to get GRUB to boot from an ext4 filesystem with said features enabled.
- mekster 4y ago
  When could ext4's specification change? It's not just the MS implementation that might break but everybody's file system may be in danger. Filesystem is supposed to be as backward compatible as it should be.
- aaronmdjones 4y ago
  Ext4 was explicitly designed with maintaining backwards and (limited) forwards compatibility in mind precisely for the reason pointed out in my sibling comments. Depending on the filesystem features you enable, you can even mount an ext4 filesystem with the ext2 kernel driver, and you can already mount an ext2 or ext3 filesystem with the ext4 kernel driver. A large part of this compatibility is due to the bitmap of compatible, compatible read-only, and incompatible filesystem flags in the filesystem superblock. For example, when ext4 got support for extents, that's an incompatible feature; you cannot mount an ext4 filesystem with extents with the ext3 kernel driver. This does not even require ext3 to know what an extent is because it's just indicated as an unknown (from the ext3 driver's perspective) incompatibility flag. On the other hand, the implementation of sparse superblocks (keeping fewer copies of the superblock around to allow for more blocks to be used for file data on filesystems intended to house lots of large files) is merely a read-only compatibility bit; you can mount an ext4 filesystem using sparse superblocks with an ext2/ext3/ext4 driver that does not support them, in a read-only manner. This cannot be mounted read-write because the implementation may try to place a filesystem superblock where file data is supposed to be, which would lead to at best wasted space (negating the feature) or at worst limited filesystem corruption. When feature changes that could break things are made to the ext4 implementation in the Linux kernel, they are always done so using these (in)compatibility flags, ensuring that only implementations that can entirely support the feature can mount them read-write, and that implementations whose ability to read would not be affected can still mount them read-only. This allows you to create future filesystems (using e.g. mke2fs(8)) and not turn those features on while doing so, if you want the filesystem to be used by other implementations. Something you already have to bear in mind if you're creating a filesystem using a modern mke2fs but intended to be read by ancient Linux kernels.
pseudostem 4y ago
I installed Debian on WSL for the very first time a few weeks back. Windows explorer gives access to the Debian folder while it is running and no access otherwise. Had me scratching my head. I don't know much about virtualisation, but if that is the key, they could probably have a highly customised, small Linux kernel running all the time perhaps.
- cobertos 4y ago
  WSL uses the 9P protocol for filesystem stuff[1]. There's a 9P server running in Debian and a 9P client running in Windows to connect it together [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)#Server_applications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)#Server_applica...
pajko 4y ago
Maybe you are looking for https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/ https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/
bramblerose 4y ago
ext2fsd and ext2ifs do exactly that, although neither of them is very actively maintained (but do they really need to?)
- themoonisachees 4y ago
  I've used ext2fsd in the past and it worked well. I don't think you could boot windows off of it but you can certainly start touching your Linux drive from there.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Writing filesystem drivers for Windows is extraordinarily difficult, more so than generic drivers and the result is hard to call GPL compatible because a signature which is basically not obtainable for individuals is required to load them.
vic20forever 4y ago
This looks like what you need: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-dis...

p_l 4y ago

There used to be an ext2 driver for NT, I think opensource even, but there simply had not been enough interest to keep it updated or built for newer versions

dale_glass 4y ago

> Related tangent: Something I don't fully understand (perhaps I just haven't found a project that facilitates it) is why there isn't a Windows extension (driver?) that allows for native mounting of ext4 partitions within Windows explorer. Such projects have long existed, but I suspect there's a lack of interest. It's a difficult technical problem with a narrow usage niche. You need somebody who wants both Windows and Linux, and wants to use the same physical disks. Today, why bother? You can use a NAS, cloud storage, virtualization, etc.

leoc 4y ago
Wanting to dual-boot sometimes isn't that rare, surely. And local storage for documents remains popular too. It seems to reflect the reality that serious Linux development effort has been very server-focussed for a long time.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  These days probably quite rare, except for gaming. Virtualization is far more convenient.
  - kaetemi 4y ago
    Yeah, if you're going to exclude the common use cases, obviously it's going to be rare. (: People still use local storage. (I'd also like native ext4 support in Windows.)
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      Yeah, but when I boot Windows for gaming, I don't care about sharing data with Linux. And given the availability of cloud storage, I can just upload whatever little I need to share.
      - mst 4y ago
        Not all dual boot systems are "main OS" plus "wintendo." Quite a lot of the ones I encounter on personal machines are, certainly, but people doing actual dev stuff on both is still a use case.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    Valve is working hard to change that.
  - itsboring 4y ago
    Used to dual boot, but with the combo of steam/proton and VFIO passthrough + looking glass, it’s been really solid to just run both at the same time. File sharing between the two is pretty easy in that case, because it’s just the usual rsync/scp tools or SMB share. Although, I’ve found I very rarely need the guest for gaming anymore, more so for opening the odd Photoshop file and similar tasks.
    - checkyoursudo 4y ago
watmough 4y ago
Back in the day, and I mean like mid-late 90's, you could actually install the Linux kernel, files etc., straight onto a Windows FAT partition and boot into it. Not exactly what was being asked for, but a weird old fact I'd forgotten about.
- progman32 4y ago
  There was a distribution called WinLinux that did this, iirc. Installed like a normal piece of windows software. Was my first foray into unices when I was a young kid. There were some fun games in that distro!
- fdr 4y ago
  Sometime in the early 2000s, when microarchitectural features for virtualization were rare, I used coLinux in a working capacity. It has a design was amazing at how well it worked given the constrained size of the code changes. In short, it ran a copy of Linux in supervisor mode in addition to Windows (this is the "driver mode"). At the same time. Both in supervisor mode. As a giant coroutines yielding to one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_Linux http://www.colinux.org/publications/Reprint-Aloni-OLS2004.pdf http://www.colinux.org/publications/Reprint-Aloni-OLS2004.pd...
  - lta 4y ago
    A friend of mine has been using this setup for a very long time do be able to write music and work on the same station. I remember I was amazed at how solid the thing was. Does anyone know if there's a relationship between colinux and how ms eventually ended up implementing wsl ?
    - fdr 4y ago
      Not so much. WSL1 was a too-audacious attempt to implement enough Linux-style system calls in Windows to run Linux software. Which it did surprisingly well, considering...but also, often strangely, and slowly. I think the name is a bit ironic, since the whole idea is to avoid using any Linux code in Windows, but implementing system calls so that the non-Linux parts of a Linux distribution could pretend Windows was Linux. GNU/Windows-pretending-to-be-Linux, as it were. WSL2 is virtualization-based, so it could be seen as more comparable to Docker's installation package as seen on non-Linux platforms, or Parallels: a somewhat elaborate attempt to improve the virtualization experience in interoperation with the host, e.g. setting up NAT, network file systems, or installing special drivers. I don't think coLinux offers as much as it did, now that virtualization micro-architectural features are routinely available. At least one part of coLinux that took up quite a bit of its code was special drivers to interface with the host OS. This code would still be useful and has parallels in current approaches, but the decisive trick of toggling between two kernels running in supervisor mode has less room to be useful. Also, you could only imagine the difficulty of identifying the origin of bugs in that set-up.
Spivak 4y ago
Or just using NTFS since Linux now has good support for it.
yellowapple 4y ago
The niche surely ain't that narrow, especially as Linux-based devices like Raspberry Pis and Steam Decks grow in popularity; being able to ready EXT-formatted SD cards and such seems like it'd be valuable even from Windows.
lasftew 4y ago
It might be convenient, but it is also more complex than just being able to read file systems. External disks or partitions containing data in particular will / should always be fully encrypted nowadays, so you'd need interoperability of disk encryption schemes as well (dmcrypt, bitlocker). NAS can handle that transparently.
arglebargle123 4y ago
Now that the new NTFS3 driver is out in the wild there's also not much need. The number of people who boot windows and need to access an ext4 partition is tiny compared to the number of people booting Linux who need to access NTFS.

viraptor 4y ago

Paragon has been doing it for quite a while. You just need to pay extra. https://www.paragon-software.com/business/extfs-for-windows/ https://www.paragon-software.com/business/extfs-for-windows/

mukesh610 4y ago
Don't use this. I once tried it and it changed the UUID of the Linux partition without any warning. Grub was unable to pick up the partition and boot, so I was stuck at grub rescue. God knows what other bugs their software has.
gfody 4y ago
contact Sales for a quote. I guess the price depends on how many files you plan on storing?
- smw 4y ago
  $20 if you're a home user?
- chronogram 4y ago
  That's the business page, the home user page shows €19,95 for me.

hackmiester 4y ago

> I think exfat has recently gained support in all three platforms but it's not reliable for an internal hard drive (I think?). I've been doing this for a few years now. It just doesn't support some stuff, like permissions, but for just a pile of files, it's fine.

toastal 4y ago
No symlinks, no transparent compression… there's quite a few mission things
- toastal 4y ago
  Missing*
- hackmiester 4y ago
  I haven't stubbed my toe on the former yet, but I agree it's not great. I'm mainly storing media, photos, etc. (relatively not compressible) so the latter doesn't matter much to me. I think that's probably a common use case for a drive you can read anywhere, so I still like ExFAT for that, generally speaking.
  - toastal 4y ago
    Is the performance decent for the ‘cost’ of lacking features?
    - hackmiester 4y ago
      I would say yes, but I'm not pushing it exceptionally hard. I would say it makes a good default unless/until you run into a problem with it.

hyperdimension 4y ago

To your last point: try UFS! I use it for cross-platform flash drives. Better than FAT32, anyway.

cpach 4y ago
I guess you’re referring to Universal Flash Storage rather than Unix File System? (:
- SSLy 4y ago
  Maybe UDF?
  - efrecon 4y ago
    Probably. Last time I check UDF is a format supported by the 3 major OSes out of the box.
    - yyyk 4y ago
      I recall getting UDF cross compatibility required a bit of non-trivial work[0], did this improve recently? [0] https://github.com/JElchison/format-udf https://github.com/JElchison/format-udf
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    Yeah, UDF. UFS won't get you terribly far with cross-platform support... Thank you.

csdvrx 4y ago

> I think exfat has recently gained support in all three platforms but it's not reliable for an internal hard drive (I think?). It's not, and recovery tools are still lacking. Keep using NTFS for now.

JonathonW 4y ago
exfat’s reliability “issues” are by design— it’s not journaled, to simplify implementation (and reduce resource use) on embedded devices and reduce wear on flash media. It’s not a replacement for NTFS in applications where it’s already being used (large disks, anything where important data is being stored). Rather, it’s a modernized replacement for FAT32 for things like camera memory cards, eliminating some of FAT32’s limitations (like the file size limit) while remaining similarly lightweight.

bstar77 4y ago

It's entirely due to Microsoft's hubris.

KyeRussell 4y ago
Yeah. Screw Microsoft for not supporting a file system with a rounding error desktop user base.
- aruggirello 4y ago
  Microsoft didn't support ext because too few people were using it to justify the effort, yet somehow they went to great lengths and implemented the whole WSL, and... ~twice at that - for a possibly smaller user base?

throwaway894345 4y ago

Pretty sure there isn’t an ext4 spec, it’s just the reference implementation. Microsoft could build something that is compatible, but keeping compatibility as the reference implementation changes may not be straightforward.

haileys 4y ago
The counterpoint to this is that ext4 can't change dramatically enough to cause problems without breaking compatibility with older kernels or older filesystems.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  Certain features (like case-insensitivity) already do break compatibility, as I found out the hard way trying to get GRUB to boot from an ext4 filesystem with said features enabled.
mekster 4y ago
When could ext4's specification change? It's not just the MS implementation that might break but everybody's file system may be in danger. Filesystem is supposed to be as backward compatible as it should be.
aaronmdjones 4y ago
Ext4 was explicitly designed with maintaining backwards and (limited) forwards compatibility in mind precisely for the reason pointed out in my sibling comments. Depending on the filesystem features you enable, you can even mount an ext4 filesystem with the ext2 kernel driver, and you can already mount an ext2 or ext3 filesystem with the ext4 kernel driver. A large part of this compatibility is due to the bitmap of compatible, compatible read-only, and incompatible filesystem flags in the filesystem superblock. For example, when ext4 got support for extents, that's an incompatible feature; you cannot mount an ext4 filesystem with extents with the ext3 kernel driver. This does not even require ext3 to know what an extent is because it's just indicated as an unknown (from the ext3 driver's perspective) incompatibility flag. On the other hand, the implementation of sparse superblocks (keeping fewer copies of the superblock around to allow for more blocks to be used for file data on filesystems intended to house lots of large files) is merely a read-only compatibility bit; you can mount an ext4 filesystem using sparse superblocks with an ext2/ext3/ext4 driver that does not support them, in a read-only manner. This cannot be mounted read-write because the implementation may try to place a filesystem superblock where file data is supposed to be, which would lead to at best wasted space (negating the feature) or at worst limited filesystem corruption. When feature changes that could break things are made to the ext4 implementation in the Linux kernel, they are always done so using these (in)compatibility flags, ensuring that only implementations that can entirely support the feature can mount them read-write, and that implementations whose ability to read would not be affected can still mount them read-only. This allows you to create future filesystems (using e.g. mke2fs(8)) and not turn those features on while doing so, if you want the filesystem to be used by other implementations. Something you already have to bear in mind if you're creating a filesystem using a modern mke2fs but intended to be read by ancient Linux kernels.

pseudostem 4y ago

I installed Debian on WSL for the very first time a few weeks back. Windows explorer gives access to the Debian folder while it is running and no access otherwise. Had me scratching my head. I don't know much about virtualisation, but if that is the key, they could probably have a highly customised, small Linux kernel running all the time perhaps.

cobertos 4y ago
WSL uses the 9P protocol for filesystem stuff[1]. There's a 9P server running in Debian and a 9P client running in Windows to connect it together [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)#Server_applications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9P_(protocol)#Server_applica...

pajko 4y ago

Maybe you are looking for https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/ https://www.paragon-software.com/home/linuxfs-windows/

bramblerose 4y ago

ext2fsd and ext2ifs do exactly that, although neither of them is very actively maintained (but do they really need to?)

themoonisachees 4y ago
I've used ext2fsd in the past and it worked well. I don't think you could boot windows off of it but you can certainly start touching your Linux drive from there.

tinus_hn 4y ago

Writing filesystem drivers for Windows is extraordinarily difficult, more so than generic drivers and the result is hard to call GPL compatible because a signature which is basically not obtainable for individuals is required to load them.

vic20forever 4y ago

This looks like what you need: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-disk https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-mount-dis...