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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

I’d love to know once this is merged and has journaling if there are advantages to use NTFS instead of ext4 or other file systems as your main Linux FS, versus interop with windows drives.

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I am running a dual-boot system with BTRFS on the linux side and WinBTRFS[1] to make the partitions readable from the Windows side. This works quite well (which means I never had any issue with it).

[1]: https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs

Being able to use long file names. The "256 bytes' ought to be enough" attitude hurts in this age of emojis.

IIRC, NTFS doesn't support permissions.

config NTFS3_FS_POSIX_ACL

bool "NTFS POSIX Access Control Lists"

depends on NTFS3_FS

select FS_POSIX_ACL

help

POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) support additional access rights for users and groups beyond the standard owner/group/world scheme, and this option selects support for ACLs specifically for ntfs filesystems.

NOTE: this is linux only feature. Windows will ignore these ACLs.

I'm not sure, but iirc POSIX ACL and typical Unix permission (ala chmod 0755) are two different things.

Unix permissions are those you change via chmod while POSIX ACLs are those you view/change with getfacl/setfacl.

NTFS probably has that because Windows used to have (still has? dunno) a full POSIX subsystem / compatibility layer.

NTFS actually does support permissions, it's Windows that doesn't. NTFS also supports symbolic links and hard links.

Not contradicting just genuinely wondering, what do you mean by windows doesn't? I have different permissions setup for various users on different folders on ntfs volumes in regular windows 10 installs. Or do you mean another sort of permissions?

In this context they are talking about the POSIX permissions related to running Linux on the drive which NTFS supports but Windows does not use. Instead Windows uses another attribute for their security descriptor model which is also used by other non-file objects throughout the OS.

A lot of this stuff is actually legacy from when NT hosted POSIX and Windows subsystems simultaneously on the same kernel.

Sadly that stuff is long since dead but they have in part revived some of the ideas with their SQL Server for Linux port and WSL of course.

Not sure why I'm getting downvoted here. When POSIX subsystem of the NT kernel they added support for many POSIX style features. Namely POSIX ACL support, hard links and case-sensitivity.

I guess the reality of this is lost to history and folks like me that remember NT for what it was before it was relegated to just hosting Win32.

Does it support suid?

Um, I've had plenty of times I got a UAC (~windows sudo) prompt trying to access files I didn't have permissions to.

Doesn't WSL support Linux permissions via EAs? Couldn't they use the same model?

Not much honestly, NTFS is known for corrupting data over a long enough timeline (so it isn't suitable for server storage).

> NTFS is known for corrupting data over a long enough timeline

Any links?

Apparently it's called "bit rot": https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/67h28o/bit_rot...

Bit rot has nothing to do with NTFS though? It's a general hardware degradation issue. (Where does that say it's NTFS-related?)

There are filesystems (eg. ZFS, BtrFS) which can detect and recover from hardware degradation. NTFS cannot, therefore the problem is NTFS-related, although not limited to NTFS.

If that's what is meant, it's sure as heck misleading to single out NTFS with "known for corrupting data" as if it's somehow unique in not having error correction compared to ext4 or whatever.

Error detection can be done in the layer underneath, including doing so within device mapper.

A filesystem not doing its own vs a filesystem "corrupting data" are very different concepts.

I have never heard that before.

Any business anywhere running Windows file servers is running NTFS for server storage.

Any business running a Hyper-V virtualisation, including large cluster, is running their virtual disks on NTFS. There's an irony here in Microsoft's next generation file system being "ReFS", with "resiliant" literally there in the name. And it has such a history of bugs and unimplemented features it's not safe for use outside of specific scenarios.

Edit: the link phendrenad2 posted has a comment about a "server destroying bug" in ReFS.

That thread [1] is 4 years old. Is there recent credible evidence of ReFS being problematic?

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/67h28o/bit_rot...

Microsoft's documentation still refers to recommending NTFS "for general use" and then list specific places it's designed for. Also listed features still not available often make it a show stopper:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/refs...

Most Hyper-V admins will be familiar with this thread which is still completely accurate. This is relevant as it's "by design" and won't change or be fixed.

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2286588-please-do-not...

Here's a Veeam thread from 2019 talking about ongoing bugs: https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/windows...

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