Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 8 Aug 2002 00:56:49 +0000
From:      Shantanu Mahajan <shantanoo@ieee.org>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        ketanu@wanadoo.fr
Subject:   Re: Sharing file ystems with Linux (Debian)  
Message-ID:  <200208080056.49286.shantanoo@ieee.org>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
-------------- original msg ------------------------
1/Can'get no satisfaction*
After little investigation and experimentation, it seems that the only
filesystem both readable and writable for the two oses (OS's ?) are
msdos/vfat, samba and NFS, with the inconvenient the latters are for
networking, and the former do not support attributes nor owner, nor symbo=
lic
links for the files. Thanks to tar msdos filesystems can be used as
`transaction space' for the two oses, but is unsuitable to be used as a
`true' filesystem.

*2/But, why ?*
Although ext2fs and BSD flavour of ufs are both supported by opensource
software (the Linux Kernel, i.e. Linux,  and the FreeBSD one), there is n=
o
support allowing full read/write access for the `non standard file system=
'
within each kernel. Wondering why, i could read somewhere, the reason was=
,
more or less, that abstraction used to describe the file systems on each
kernels was not easy to coerce to the other one.

*3/Circumvent the trouble (and question)*
The lake of filesystem type that shares good between may be annoying, so =
wa
may try to circumvent it.=20

Since it seems hard to enable full support for (e.g.) ext2fs in the FreeB=
SD
kernel, it may be good to push the problem outside the kernel.

Here is the idea (and the question): could we develop a software that wou=
ld
export a given ext2fs as Network File System on the local loopback, to al=
low
the kernel access this filesystem via the NFS interface.

I was told of a software based on this idea, called ext2anywhere, that is=
 in
fact, ext2 under windows, but works good (as far as i was told).

Since my science on kernels and filesystems is rather thin (true OCB!), i=
t
would be fine if someone more clever on this gave advice on this. With su=
ch
a NFS server for accessing ext2fs, we will meet concurrence problemes ove=
r
the slice/partition presenting the filesystem, but it could be useful and
maybe easier to develop than kernel-inside support.
- --=20
---------------- end of msg --------------

First of all, FBSD can read and write ext2fs. You have to compile the ker=
nel=20
for that. Following line should be there in you kernel conf. file before=20
compilation.

options EXT2FS

For NTFS you can add following (read-only)

options NTFS

For changing the kernel (GENERIC)
--------------
cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
echo "options EXT2FS" >> GENERIC
cd /usr/src
make kernel KERNCONF=3DGENERIC
---------------
To mount ext2fs use mount_ext2fs command.

Hope this helps :-)
I am using it successfully.

Regards,
Shantanu

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200208080056.49286.shantanoo>