On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Jacob L. Leifman<jac...@bitwise.net> wrote: > On 6 Jun 2009 at 12:11, Donald Allen wrote: > >> On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Lars Nooden<lars.cura...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > Can't the legacy system be modified to work with FFS or EXT2? >> >> Hi -- >> >> Are you addressing that question to me? If so, I'm really not sure I >> understand your question. What do you mean by "the legacy system"? If >> so, are you suggesting that perhaps XP can be modified to work with >> FFS or ext2? The answer to that, I believe, is "no". While proudly not >> a Windows expert, I believe XP supports only Microsoft filesystems -- >> ntfs, fat and fat32. > > It is common to use the term "legacy system" to refer to proprietary OS > including/especially Micro$oft Windows. And since I learned more than I > ever cared about Windows XP, it _can_ be made to support much more than > what is provided by Microsoft. In particular, there are a few stable > and open source drivers to allow XP to access Linux ext2/3 filesystems. > There is also a FOSS driver for FFS but it has not been updated in a > long time and in my experience did not work too well with OpenBSD.
Thanks. I was unaware of those filesystem drivers and that usage of the term "legacy" (which I usually think of as referring to something from the past and, unfortunately, Windows exists in the present -- Webster: "1. A gift by will esp. of money or other personal property; 2. Something received from an ancestor, a predecessor, or from the past"), though I knew that it was possible (I have a vague recollection that Cutler built Windows NT on some Unix-ey, perhaps micro-kernel thing -- Mach?). But knowing that wouldn't change my approach to this issue -- I wouldn't trust some random third-party driver for Windows to be writing in my FFS filesystem. If I were going to do this with one machine, which at this point I'm not, I'd build an OpenBSD kernel, mount the ntfs partition read-only (which I guess is my only choice) and copy the files from Windows with OpenBSD. I'd certainly trust OpenBSD a heck of a lot more to a. not scribble junk in the ntfs partition that was mounted ro, and b. to write the stuff correctly in the FFS filesystem. /Don > >> As I said in my previous post, pscp and another machine present a >> simple workaround for this issue. I've got multiple machines, I rsync >> my home directory from one to the other when I have occasion to use >> something other than my primary machine, and so it's a simple matter >> to pscp file from the Windows filesystem to another machine running >> OpenBSD or Linux (which I run on my old TP 600x, on which OpenBSD >> doesn't fare too well, discussed in an earlier thread). This is needed >> very rarely (typically only when I travel and get on the network via >> wifi, which I do with Windows, just because it's easier) and so it's >> probably not worth bothering to build a kernel to add ntfs support. >> >> /Don >> >> >> > >> > -Lars
