Not ext2/ext3 drivers for other operating systems available when you format an external HDD or USB stick

[oss_test_launchpad]

AFAIK many Ubuntu users like to format their external storage devices (USB hard disk drives, USB sticks) with ext2 or ext3. The problem is that not all other operating systems can handle such media, so you might encounter situations where your data is not usable.

Apparently there are ext2/ext3 drivers for other operating systems available. Would it be possible to

1.) make sure that whenever you ext2/ext3 format an external storage device with Ubuntu, you are asked whether you want drivers for other operating systems copied on this medium,
2.) bring the driver on the device in such way that installation on the other operating system is not required, i.e. that it can run just so (somewhat like PortableApps, which do not require installation either)?

[Thomas Kluyver (takluyver)]

Is the default for such devices ext?

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

AFAIK ext3 is Ubuntu default.

AFAIK USB sticks can be formatted ext2 only, but I might be wrong here.

[Thomas Kluyver (takluyver)]

What program are you using to try to format them? Is there an option in Nautilus? (I'm on KDE, so...)

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

No, there is no option in Nautilus. I would think many people use gparted, since it is part of the standard installation.

[Thomas Kluyver (takluyver)]

Potential wishlist item.

I suspect that the easiest way to get a cross platform USB stick is simply to format with something like FAT. That may be a sensible default for some things.

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

As I read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems, maximum file size with FAT seems to be restricted to 4 Gibibyte. In my opinion this is a restriction which excludes FAT as a means of solving this problem.

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

Just noted another problem. I am trying to copy data from an Ubuntu system with an ext3 formatted hard disk drive to a FAT formatted USB stick. The system refuses to copy the file to the USB stick because it regards the file name as invalid. Well, it worked ok in ext3. Apparently FAT simply doesn't like certain characters or some syntax. So I am sorry I must say that your suggestion does not help. When you backup a full hard disk, you cannot change all file names to make them fit for FAT, can you? Certainly not.

[Thomas Kluyver (takluyver)]

Well, FAT is what most USB sticks come pre-formatted as, as far as I'm aware. So the filename restrictions are a problem that a lot of people are going to face, and not one that we can do much about in Ubuntu.

If you want to back up an entire system, I suggest you put the files into some sort of archive, and give that a dull, boring name that works anywhere. A Zip archive is good for cross-platform, or a Gzipped Tar archive is a more traditional Unix-ey solution.

While I agree that 4GiB maximum file size (note that that's for one file, not a whole disk) might be starting to limit some people, nothing springs to mind that would normally exceed that limit (Ubuntu DVD images are about 3.3 GiB). I suspect that before files of that size become common, the standard for USB sticks will have changed--probably to NTFS.

You can of course format your stick as NTFS already--that supports extended filenames, and will work with modern Linux and Windows. I don't know about Macs.

If you do want to set up the ext3 based system you described, then you will need to make a small FAT (or NTFS) partition on your USB drive, and place in there the installer for the Windows ext IFS driver, which can be found at http://www.fs-driver.org/

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

Thanks for your suggestions. I am sorry to disagree with some of your points.

> So the filename restrictions are a problem that a lot of people are going to face, and not one that we can do much about in Ubuntu.

I think I described in my very first posting what I think one might theoretically do about this. Please read.

> While I agree that 4GiB maximum file size (note that that's for one file, not a whole disk) might be starting to limit some people, nothing springs to mind that would normally exceed that limit

You named the case yourself: "If you want to back up an entire system, I suggest you put the files into some sort of archive, and give that a dull, boring name that works anywhere" (your own words a few lines above). I suppose most people have systems bigger than 4GB, don't you think?

> You can of course format your stick as NTFS already--that supports extended filenames, and will work with modern Linux and Windows. I don't know about Macs.

A quick google search suggests that there is no out of the box NTFS support in any Mac OSX.

> If you do want to set up the ext3 based system you described, then you will need to make a small FAT (or NTFS) partition on your USB drive, and place in there the installer for the Windows ext IFS driver, which can be found at http://www.fs-driver.org/

See point Nr. 2 in my original posting. Please read.

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

Reading more about the open source NTFS-3G driver, I have to add that apparently it neither supports change of file owner nor access rights, so IMHO NTFS is no option for the Ubuntu user.

[Thomas Kluyver (takluyver)]

I think this is getting needlessly confrontational.

What I mean about the filename restrictions is that people buy drives formatted as FAT, for all systems. So presumably they are running up against any filename restrictions regularly, both on Linux and Windows (and probably Mac OS). However, having just tested, I was able to use a large number of special characters, including ¬, £ and the greek letter η on my FAT formatted disk, which suggests to me that it's fairly powerful. What filename did it reject for you?

OK, I accept there are uses for >4GiB files. But even so, taking an image of your entire hard drive, including all programs and libraries, seems a bit odd. There are more advanced backup methods. I also accept that NTFS is not perfect for this purpose, although file ownership is not particularly important--what does the owner of a file matter to a different system with different users?

What exactly do you propose? I don't know if it's possible to use a filesystem driver without installing something. I think people will continue to muddle through with FAT--it's tried and tested, and its limitations don't seem, to me, very limiting.

Anyway, I don't think we're making any headway arguing. ***Could I ask anyone else reading this whether they think there is some merit in this idea.*** Should we:
- Attempt to produce the system oss_test_launchpad describes, with a main ext partition and a FAT partition with drivers to allow other OSs to access the ext system?
- Set the relevant defaults for formatting to FAT?
- Do nothing (i.e. it's fine as is)

[Szabolcs Szakacsits (szaka)]

> Reading more about the open source NTFS-3G driver,
> I have to add that apparently it neither supports change
> of file owner nor access rights, so IMHO NTFS is no option
> for the Ubuntu user.

On the NTFS-3G home page at http://ntfs-3g.org the first
link in the first paragraph points to NTFS-3G with full file
ownership and access right support:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/b.andre/security.html

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Regarding what FAT won't accept as a character: ?
Yeah, no ? in FAT filenames. Not such a "special" character, is it? Especially for song-names.

Still, it's not an Ubuntu problem that other computers have poor filesystem support. And the suggestion of putting the driver on the stick...well...if the other system can access the data on the stick to reach the driver, does it really need the driver? No. You'd need a small FAT partition containing the drivers separate from the main ext partition.

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

Seems a logical idea to me to automatize this process (create a seperate FAT partition and putting drivers that don't need installation on it).

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 07:34 +0000, oss_test_launchpad wrote:
> Seems a logical idea to me to automatize this process (create a seperate
> FAT partition and putting drivers that don't need installation on it).

"drivers that don't need installation"? I'm pretty sure the Windows
ext2 drivers do need installation. I've never heard of a driver that
didn't need installation.

[Curtis Gedak (gedakc)]

This report should be closed as WONTFIX because there is no way that GParted can provide all file system drivers for all operating systems.