NTFS partition read only (no write) on Feisty clean install

[tyknkd]

Despite being claimed as a feature (see wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions ), NTFS partitions are not writeable after clean install of Feisty 7.04.

Partitions were automatically mounted, but are read-only.

I have attempted to change fstab options (user,rw,exec,umask=000) and setting permissions as root, but problem persists.

Is automatic read/write to NTFS partitions truly a feature of 7.04?

[Laurent Bigonville (bigon)]

Hi,

How did you mount the ntfs partition? do you use the ntfs module of the kernel or do you use the ntfs-3g with fuse?

The ntfs module has no write support enabled by default.

[Szabolcs Szakacsits (szaka)]

Ubuntu 7.04 doesn't support NTFS read/write out of the box. But it can be done if you install ntfs-3g and ntfs-config from the Universe repository then run ntfs-config as the document describes.

[tyknkd (tyknkd)]

Laurent,
Thank you for your response. The ntfs partition was automatically mounted during the installation process. I didn't use ntfs-3g. Is the ntfs kernel capable of making ntfs partitions writeable?

Szabolcs,
Thank you for your response. If by "the document" you mean the windows partition help page referenced in my post above, according to that document it is not clear whether one must install ntfs-3g for 7.04:

"Ubuntu 7.04 can read and write files on the NTFS drives commonly used by Windows.
Note: Not all users are finding this to be the case: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=418260 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=418048 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=417784 It may be necessary to install ntfs-config as described below:
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and 6.10 came with older, beta versions of the NTFS 3G driver. These worked well for many users but were not guaranteed to be stable. Use Ubuntu 7.04 for stable access to NTFS partitions."

There are several forum posts that indicate users believe ntfs-config/ntfs-3g is not necessary. I added the "note" to the document stating that according to the forums some users have had to add ntfs-config in order to have write permissions to ntfs drives. Some more clarity from the developers on this "feature" would be very helpful.

[Laurent Bigonville (bigon)]

ntfs-3g IS needed to have full read/write support. The kernel module write support still experimental (or even worse dangerous).

[Szabolcs Szakacsits (szaka)]

From ntfs-3g upstream: not some but all users must install ntfs-3g and ntfs-config then do the configuration themself to have read/write NTFS since Ubuntu 7.04 doesn't support this automatically. The document is indeed unclear on this. Thank you for fixing it.

[tyknkd (tyknkd)]

Laurent,
Thank you. I will updated the help document to make it clear that ntfs-config is needed.

[tyknkd (tyknkd)]

Thank you, Szabolcs.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I am closing this bug report as it seems the documentation, which was the problem here, has been updated.