On Monday 26 May 2008 17:49:29 Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 17:13 -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> My suggestion: Provide an additional binary package for the ntfsprogs
> mount command (e.g., ntfsprogs-mount) which would have the mount
> command and man-page. Installation of this "new" package should be
> made to conflict with ntfs-3g so that both could not be installed at
> the same time. For F10 (an probably F11) continue with the current
> default installs ... that is, both ntfs-3g and ntfsprogs but not
> ntfsprogs-mount.
I disagree. Having two methods for ntfs mount seems like a recipe for
failure. I looked at both of them, and determined that the ntfs-3g mount
mechanism was far more robust and better maintained. I don't really
think we benefit at all from enabling the ntfsprogs mount functionality.
OK, you sold me. I learned many years ago that it really does not matter
how "fast" something runs if its operation is not reliably correct.
Or, to put it more succinctly, when we've had any problems with ntfs-3g
mount, Szaka has been extremely helpful in working with us to resolve
the issues. We've also had issues with the ntfsprogs suite, and received
zero help or feedback on our patches. "Supporting" the ntfsprogs mount
will simply lead to more bugs, and I've got enough of those as is. :)
Even more sold.
I have already had a minor problem with ntfsclone where is would not restore
to a (vmware virtual disk) partition which was exactly the same size/same
geometry as the original. The work around was to make the partition slightly
larger, do the ntfsclone restore (which now worked), and then fix things up
with ntfsresize.
I'm hopeful that in time, the conflict/competition between ntfs-3g and
ntfsprogs will all balance itself out. If we need to enable the
ntfsprogs mount, it is only a minor amount of work, and could be done
quickly.
I sure hope the issues are resolved and the two projects merge.
~spot
p.s. I'm hedging my bets on ntfs-3g. They show community and growth,
where ntfsprogs doesn't.
As I said, it was somewhat surprising to have a project be more or less
stagnate and then, suddenly, issue a huge change. This alone makes ntfsprogs
a bit questionable. The ntfsprogs mount command is a minor issue. The real
question to me is how good the code is in libntfs as compared to libntfs-3g.
Gene