NTFSplus is a new read-write NTFS driver for Linux • The Register

Slightly below 4 years after the Linux kernel gained built-in read-write entry to Home windows drives, an alternate possibility has appeared.

The code patch containing the brand new ntfsplus driver was submitted by kernel developer Namjae Jeon. He is one of many prime kernel file system boffins – three years in the past, he wrote the code that added the ability to repair exFAT volumes to Linux.

NTFSplus is an sudden growth as a result of for about 4 years now, the Linux kernel has contained a read-write NTFS driver. It is known as ntfs3 and it appeared in kernel 5.15 again in November 2021. It is known as NTFS3 as a result of it successfully changed the previous ntfs driver, which simply supplied read-only assist, and ntfs-3g which works through FUSE – that means that it runs as an unusual, unprivileged userspace program, which imposes efficiency and different limitations.

The GPL ntfs3 driver was donated to the kernel by Konstantin Komarov, whose firm Paragon Software sells a number of industrial drive administration instruments, together with drivers to permit read-write entry to just about any mixture of Mac, Linux, and Home windows drives from Home windows, Linux, or macOS. In different phrases, he has a demanding day job – and 6 months after NTFS3 was merged, concerns emerged that Komarov wasn’t able to maintain it. One of many individuals who responded then was Namjae Jeon, who stated:

Slightly than “just a few months,” it took just a few years – however right here it’s. It modernizes the previous read-only driver in a number of vital methods. It replaces the previous driver’s use of buffer heads with the extra fashionable iomap mechanism, and it operates on folios as an alternative of reminiscence pages. Nonetheless, it is not but absolutely full. As an example, it does not but assist NTFS journaling, solely journal-replay, and that does not but work accurately. (Journal replay is what occurs when a journalled quantity is mounted that wasn’t cleanly unmounted final time – as an illustration, if the bodily medium was disconnected with out ejecting it, or the pc crashed.) Saying that, supporting solely journal replay appears to be like prefer it additionally applies to each ntfs3 and ntfs-3g.

Namjae says that NTFSplus already outperforms ntfs3, which could be due to the folio assist – it made ext4 in kernel 6.16 faster.

We won’t see any strategy to interpret a number of the feedback within the patch as something apart from criticisms of the present code:

And:

To these not used to how FOSS growth works, it could at first look look ungrateful. Konstantin Komarov says that the GPL2 NTFS code he donated – after some difficulties getting it accepted – was unrelated to Paragon’s industrial NTFS instruments. Growing a brand new driver, submitting it, after which extensively restructuring it to get it accepted was numerous work… and now, it is perhaps thrown out, supplanted by a modernized model of the code it changed?

Properly, it might be. This has occurred earlier than, greater than as soon as. The primary time that The Reg FOSS desk remembers was the unique 1996 Linux kernel USB subsystem – a driver called UUSBD by Iñaky Pérez González. It was discarded in favour of a new, modular stack by Linus himself, with little left besides a message of thanks. ®