docs: filesystems: convert ntfs.txt to ReST
- Add a SPDX header;
- Adjust document title;
- Comment out text-only ToC;
- Some whitespace fixes and new line breaks;
- Mark literal blocks as such;
- Add table markups;
- Add it to filesystems/index.rst.
Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <[email protected]>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/f09ca6c9bdd4e7aa7208f3dba0b8753080b38d03.1581955849.git.mchehab+huawei@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <[email protected]>
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/ntfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/ntfs.rst
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+================================
+The Linux NTFS filesystem driver
+================================
+
+
+.. Table of contents
+
+ - Overview
+ - Web site
+ - Features
+ - Supported mount options
+ - Known bugs and (mis-)features
+ - Using NTFS volume and stripe sets
+ - The Device-Mapper driver
+ - The Software RAID / MD driver
+ - Limitations when using the MD driver
+
+
+Overview
+========
+
+Linux-NTFS comes with a number of user-space programs known as ntfsprogs.
+These include mkntfs, a full-featured ntfs filesystem format utility,
+ntfsundelete used for recovering files that were unintentionally deleted
+from an NTFS volume and ntfsresize which is used to resize an NTFS partition.
+See the web site for more information.
+
+To mount an NTFS 1.2/3.x (Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003) volume, use the file
+system type 'ntfs'. The driver currently supports read-only mode (with no
+fault-tolerance, encryption or journalling) and very limited, but safe, write
+support.
+
+For fault tolerance and raid support (i.e. volume and stripe sets), you can
+use the kernel's Software RAID / MD driver. See section "Using Software RAID
+with NTFS" for details.
+
+
+Web site
+========
+
+There is plenty of additional information on the linux-ntfs web site
+at http://www.linux-ntfs.org/
+
+The web site has a lot of additional information, such as a comprehensive
+FAQ, documentation on the NTFS on-disk format, information on the Linux-NTFS
+userspace utilities, etc.
+
+
+Features
+========
+
+- This is a complete rewrite of the NTFS driver that used to be in the 2.4 and
+ earlier kernels. This new driver implements NTFS read support and is
+ functionally equivalent to the old ntfs driver and it also implements limited
+ write support. The biggest limitation at present is that files/directories
+ cannot be created or deleted. See below for the list of write features that
+ are so far supported. Another limitation is that writing to compressed files
+ is not implemented at all. Also, neither read nor write access to encrypted
+ files is so far implemented.
+- The new driver has full support for sparse files on NTFS 3.x volumes which
+ the old driver isn't happy with.
+- The new driver supports execution of binaries due to mmap() now being
+ supported.
+- The new driver supports loopback mounting of files on NTFS which is used by
+ some Linux distributions to enable the user to run Linux from an NTFS
+ partition by creating a large file while in Windows and then loopback
+ mounting the file while in Linux and creating a Linux filesystem on it that
+ is used to install Linux on it.
+- A comparison of the two drivers using::
+
+ time find . -type f -exec md5sum "{}" \;
+
+ run three times in sequence with each driver (after a reboot) on a 1.4GiB
+ NTFS partition, showed the new driver to be 20% faster in total time elapsed
+ (from 9:43 minutes on average down to 7:53). The time spent in user space
+ was unchanged but the time spent in the kernel was decreased by a factor of
+ 2.5 (from 85 CPU seconds down to 33).
+- The driver does not support short file names in general. For backwards
+ compatibility, we implement access to files using their short file names if
+ they exist. The driver will not create short file names however, and a
+ rename will discard any existing short file name.
+- The new driver supports exporting of mounted NTFS volumes via NFS.
+- The new driver supports async io (aio).
+- The new driver supports fsync(2), fdatasync(2), and msync(2).
+- The new driver supports readv(2) and writev(2).
+- The new driver supports access time updates (including mtime and ctime).
+- The new driver supports truncate(2) and open(2) with O_TRUNC. But at present
+ only very limited support for highly fragmented files, i.e. ones which have
+ their data attribute split across multiple extents, is included. Another
+ limitation is that at present truncate(2) will never create sparse files,
+ since to mark a file sparse we need to modify the directory entry for the
+ file and we do not implement directory modifications yet.
+- The new driver supports write(2) which can both overwrite existing data and
+ extend the file size so that you can write beyond the existing data. Also,
+ writing into sparse regions is supported and the holes are filled in with
+ clusters. But at present only limited support for highly fragmented files,
+ i.e. ones which have their data attribute split across multiple extents, is
+ included. Another limitation is that write(2) will never create sparse
+ files, since to mark a file sparse we need to modify the directory entry for
+ the file and we do not implement directory modifications yet.
+
+Supported mount options
+=======================
+
+In addition to the generic mount options described by the manual page for the
+mount command (man 8 mount, also see man 5 fstab), the NTFS driver supports the
+following mount options:
+
+======================= =======================================================
+iocharset=name Deprecated option. Still supported but please use
+ nls=name in the future. See description for nls=name.
+
+nls=name Character set to use when returning file names.
+ Unlike VFAT, NTFS suppresses names that contain
+ unconvertible characters. Note that most character
+ sets contain insufficient characters to represent all
+ possible Unicode characters that can exist on NTFS.
+ To be sure you are not missing any files, you are
+ advised to use nls=utf8 which is capable of
+ representing all Unicode characters.
+
+utf8=<bool> Option no longer supported. Currently mapped to
+ nls=utf8 but please use nls=utf8 in the future and
+ make sure utf8 is compiled either as module or into
+ the kernel. See description for nls=name.
+
+uid=
+gid=
+umask= Provide default owner, group, and access mode mask.
+ These options work as documented in mount(8). By
+ default, the files/directories are owned by root and
+ he/she has read and write permissions, as well as
+ browse permission for directories. No one else has any
+ access permissions. I.e. the mode on all files is by
+ default rw------- and for directories rwx------, a
+ consequence of the default fmask=0177 and dmask=0077.
+ Using a umask of zero will grant all permissions to
+ everyone, i.e. all files and directories will have mode
+ rwxrwxrwx.
+
+fmask=
+dmask= Instead of specifying umask which applies both to
+ files and directories, fmask applies only to files and
+ dmask only to directories.
+
+sloppy=<BOOL> If sloppy is specified, ignore unknown mount options.
+ Otherwise the default behaviour is to abort mount if
+ any unknown options are found.
+
+show_sys_files=<BOOL> If show_sys_files is specified, show the system files
+ in directory listings. Otherwise the default behaviour
+ is to hide the system files.
+ Note that even when show_sys_files is specified, "$MFT"
+ will not be visible due to bugs/mis-features in glibc.
+ Further, note that irrespective of show_sys_files, all
+ files are accessible by name, i.e. you can always do
+ "ls -l \$UpCase" for example to specifically show the
+ system file containing the Unicode upcase table.
+
+case_sensitive=<BOOL> If case_sensitive is specified, treat all file names as
+ case sensitive and create file names in the POSIX
+ namespace. Otherwise the default behaviour is to treat
+ file names as case insensitive and to create file names
+ in the WIN32/LONG name space. Note, the Linux NTFS
+ driver will never create short file names and will
+ remove them on rename/delete of the corresponding long
+ file name.
+ Note that files remain accessible via their short file
+ name, if it exists. If case_sensitive, you will need
+ to provide the correct case of the short file name.
+
+disable_sparse=<BOOL> If disable_sparse is specified, creation of sparse
+ regions, i.e. holes, inside files is disabled for the
+ volume (for the duration of this mount only). By
+ default, creation of sparse regions is enabled, which
+ is consistent with the behaviour of traditional Unix
+ filesystems.
+
+errors=opt What to do when critical filesystem errors are found.
+ Following values can be used for "opt":
+
+ ======== =========================================
+ continue DEFAULT, try to clean-up as much as
+ possible, e.g. marking a corrupt inode as
+ bad so it is no longer accessed, and then
+ continue.
+ recover At present only supported is recovery of
+ the boot sector from the backup copy.
+ If read-only mount, the recovery is done
+ in memory only and not written to disk.
+ ======== =========================================
+
+ Note that the options are additive, i.e. specifying::
+
+ errors=continue,errors=recover
+
+ means the driver will attempt to recover and if that
+ fails it will clean-up as much as possible and
+ continue.
+
+mft_zone_multiplier= Set the MFT zone multiplier for the volume (this
+ setting is not persistent across mounts and can be
+ changed from mount to mount but cannot be changed on
+ remount). Values of 1 to 4 are allowed, 1 being the
+ default. The MFT zone multiplier determines how much
+ space is reserved for the MFT on the volume. If all
+ other space is used up, then the MFT zone will be
+ shrunk dynamically, so this has no impact on the
+ amount of free space. However, it can have an impact
+ on performance by affecting fragmentation of the MFT.
+ In general use the default. If you have a lot of small
+ files then use a higher value. The values have the
+ following meaning:
+
+ ===== =================================
+ Value MFT zone size (% of volume size)
+ ===== =================================
+ 1 12.5%
+ 2 25%
+ 3 37.5%
+ 4 50%
+ ===== =================================
+
+ Note this option is irrelevant for read-only mounts.
+======================= =======================================================
+
+
+Known bugs and (mis-)features
+=============================
+
+- The link count on each directory inode entry is set to 1, due to Linux not
+ supporting directory hard links. This may well confuse some user space
+ applications, since the directory names will have the same inode numbers.
+ This also speeds up ntfs_read_inode() immensely. And we haven't found any
+ problems with this approach so far. If you find a problem with this, please
+ let us know.
+
+
+Please send bug reports/comments/feedback/abuse to the Linux-NTFS development
+list at sourceforge: [email protected]
+
+
+Using NTFS volume and stripe sets
+=================================
+
+For support of volume and stripe sets, you can either use the kernel's
+Device-Mapper driver or the kernel's Software RAID / MD driver. The former is
+the recommended one to use for linear raid. But the latter is required for
+raid level 5. For striping and mirroring, either driver should work fine.
+
+
+The Device-Mapper driver
+------------------------
+
+You will need to create a table of the components of the volume/stripe set and
+how they fit together and load this into the kernel using the dmsetup utility
+(see man 8 dmsetup).
+
+Linear volume sets, i.e. linear raid, has been tested and works fine. Even
+though untested, there is no reason why stripe sets, i.e. raid level 0, and
+mirrors, i.e. raid level 1 should not work, too. Stripes with parity, i.e.
+raid level 5, unfortunately cannot work yet because the current version of the
+Device-Mapper driver does not support raid level 5. You may be able to use the
+Software RAID / MD driver for raid level 5, see the next section for details.
+
+To create the table describing your volume you will need to know each of its
+components and their sizes in sectors, i.e. multiples of 512-byte blocks.
+
+For NT4 fault tolerant volumes you can obtain the sizes using fdisk. So for
+example if one of your partitions is /dev/hda2 you would do::
+
+ $ fdisk -ul /dev/hda
+
+ Disk /dev/hda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
+ 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders, total 160086528 sectors
+ Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
+
+ Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
+ /dev/hda1 * 63 4209029 2104483+ 83 Linux
+ /dev/hda2 4209030 37768814 16779892+ 86 NTFS
+ /dev/hda3 37768815 46170809 4200997+ 83 Linux
+
+And you would know that /dev/hda2 has a size of 37768814 - 4209030 + 1 =
+33559785 sectors.
+
+For Win2k and later dynamic disks, you can for example use the ldminfo utility
+which is part of the Linux LDM tools (the latest version at the time of
+writing is linux-ldm-0.0.8.tar.bz2). You can download it from:
+
+ http://www.linux-ntfs.org/
+
+Simply extract the downloaded archive (tar xvjf linux-ldm-0.0.8.tar.bz2), go
+into it (cd linux-ldm-0.0.8) and change to the test directory (cd test). You
+will find the precompiled (i386) ldminfo utility there. NOTE: You will not be
+able to compile this yourself easily so use the binary version!
+
+Then you would use ldminfo in dump mode to obtain the necessary information::
+
+ $ ./ldminfo --dump /dev/hda
+
+This would dump the LDM database found on /dev/hda which describes all of your
+dynamic disks and all the volumes on them. At the bottom you will see the
+VOLUME DEFINITIONS section which is all you really need. You may need to look
+further above to determine which of the disks in the volume definitions is
+which device in Linux. Hint: Run ldminfo on each of your dynamic disks and
+look at the Disk Id close to the top of the output for each (the PRIVATE HEADER
+section). You can then find these Disk Ids in the VBLK DATABASE section in the
+<Disk> components where you will get the LDM Name for the disk that is found in
+the VOLUME DEFINITIONS section.
+
+Note you will also need to enable the LDM driver in the Linux kernel. If your
+distribution did not enable it, you will need to recompile the kernel with it
+enabled. This will create the LDM partitions on each device at boot time. You
+would then use those devices (for /dev/hda they would be /dev/hda1, 2, 3, etc)
+in the Device-Mapper table.
+
+You can also bypass using the LDM driver by using the main device (e.g.
+/dev/hda) and then using the offsets of the LDM partitions into this device as
+the "Start sector of device" when creating the table. Once again ldminfo would
+give you the correct information to do this.
+
+Assuming you know all your devices and their sizes things are easy.
+
+For a linear raid the table would look like this (note all values are in
+512-byte sectors)::
+
+ # Offset into Size of this Raid type Device Start sector
+ # volume device of device
+ 0 1028161 linear /dev/hda1 0
+ 1028161 3903762 linear /dev/hdb2 0
+ 4931923 2103211 linear /dev/hdc1 0
+
+For a striped volume, i.e. raid level 0, you will need to know the chunk size
+you used when creating the volume. Windows uses 64kiB as the default, so it
+will probably be this unless you changes the defaults when creating the array.
+
+For a raid level 0 the table would look like this (note all values are in
+512-byte sectors)::
+
+ # Offset Size Raid Number Chunk 1st Start 2nd Start
+ # into of the type of size Device in Device in
+ # volume volume stripes device device
+ 0 2056320 striped 2 128 /dev/hda1 0 /dev/hdb1 0
+
+If there are more than two devices, just add each of them to the end of the
+line.
+
+Finally, for a mirrored volume, i.e. raid level 1, the table would look like
+this (note all values are in 512-byte sectors)::
+
+ # Ofs Size Raid Log Number Region Should Number Source Start Target Start
+ # in of the type type of log size sync? of Device in Device in
+ # vol volume params mirrors Device Device
+ 0 2056320 mirror core 2 16 nosync 2 /dev/hda1 0 /dev/hdb1 0
+
+If you are mirroring to multiple devices you can specify further targets at the
+end of the line.
+
+Note the "Should sync?" parameter "nosync" means that the two mirrors are
+already in sync which will be the case on a clean shutdown of Windows. If the
+mirrors are not clean, you can specify the "sync" option instead of "nosync"
+and the Device-Mapper driver will then copy the entirety of the "Source Device"
+to the "Target Device" or if you specified multiple target devices to all of
+them.
+
+Once you have your table, save it in a file somewhere (e.g. /etc/ntfsvolume1),
+and hand it over to dmsetup to work with, like so::
+
+ $ dmsetup create myvolume1 /etc/ntfsvolume1
+
+You can obviously replace "myvolume1" with whatever name you like.
+
+If it all worked, you will now have the device /dev/device-mapper/myvolume1
+which you can then just use as an argument to the mount command as usual to
+mount the ntfs volume. For example::
+
+ $ mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/device-mapper/myvolume1 /mnt/myvol1
+
+(You need to create the directory /mnt/myvol1 first and of course you can use
+anything you like instead of /mnt/myvol1 as long as it is an existing
+directory.)
+
+It is advisable to do the mount read-only to see if the volume has been setup
+correctly to avoid the possibility of causing damage to the data on the ntfs
+volume.
+
+
+The Software RAID / MD driver
+-----------------------------
+
+An alternative to using the Device-Mapper driver is to use the kernel's
+Software RAID / MD driver. For which you need to set up your /etc/raidtab
+appropriately (see man 5 raidtab).
+
+Linear volume sets, i.e. linear raid, as well as stripe sets, i.e. raid level
+0, have been tested and work fine (though see section "Limitations when using
+the MD driver with NTFS volumes" especially if you want to use linear raid).
+Even though untested, there is no reason why mirrors, i.e. raid level 1, and
+stripes with parity, i.e. raid level 5, should not work, too.
+
+You have to use the "persistent-superblock 0" option for each raid-disk in the
+NTFS volume/stripe you are configuring in /etc/raidtab as the persistent
+superblock used by the MD driver would damage the NTFS volume.
+
+Windows by default uses a stripe chunk size of 64k, so you probably want the
+"chunk-size 64k" option for each raid-disk, too.
+
+For example, if you have a stripe set consisting of two partitions /dev/hda5
+and /dev/hdb1 your /etc/raidtab would look like this::
+
+ raiddev /dev/md0
+ raid-level 0
+ nr-raid-disks 2
+ nr-spare-disks 0
+ persistent-superblock 0
+ chunk-size 64k
+ device /dev/hda5
+ raid-disk 0
+ device /dev/hdb1
+ raid-disk 1
+
+For linear raid, just change the raid-level above to "raid-level linear", for
+mirrors, change it to "raid-level 1", and for stripe sets with parity, change
+it to "raid-level 5".
+
+Note for stripe sets with parity you will also need to tell the MD driver
+which parity algorithm to use by specifying the option "parity-algorithm
+which", where you need to replace "which" with the name of the algorithm to
+use (see man 5 raidtab for available algorithms) and you will have to try the
+different available algorithms until you find one that works. Make sure you
+are working read-only when playing with this as you may damage your data
+otherwise. If you find which algorithm works please let us know (email the
+linux-ntfs developers list [email protected] or drop in on
+IRC in channel #ntfs on the irc.freenode.net network) so we can update this
+documentation.
+
+Once the raidtab is setup, run for example raid0run -a to start all devices or
+raid0run /dev/md0 to start a particular md device, in this case /dev/md0.
+
+Then just use the mount command as usual to mount the ntfs volume using for
+example::
+
+ mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/md0 /mnt/myntfsvolume
+
+It is advisable to do the mount read-only to see if the md volume has been
+setup correctly to avoid the possibility of causing damage to the data on the
+ntfs volume.
+
+
+Limitations when using the Software RAID / MD driver
+-----------------------------------------------------
+
+Using the md driver will not work properly if any of your NTFS partitions have
+an odd number of sectors. This is especially important for linear raid as all
+data after the first partition with an odd number of sectors will be offset by
+one or more sectors so if you mount such a partition with write support you
+will cause massive damage to the data on the volume which will only become
+apparent when you try to use the volume again under Windows.
+
+So when using linear raid, make sure that all your partitions have an even
+number of sectors BEFORE attempting to use it. You have been warned!
+
+Even better is to simply use the Device-Mapper for linear raid and then you do
+not have this problem with odd numbers of sectors.
