Re: ntfsprogs libntfs:// method handler

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2003-10-29 at 08:19, Jan Kratochvil wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Linux-NTFS Project is a Linux kernel driver for the NTFS file system written as
> native Linux kernel code:
> 	http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Its 'ntfsprogs' package includes 'libntfs' library for userland (no Linux
> kernel driver needed) access to NTFS disks. It is currently mostly read-only.
> 
> As my project needs to get ntfs.sys/ntoskrnl.exe driver(s) from possibly ext2,
> vfat, web/http and/or ntfs disks I wrote libntfs:// method handler to unify the
> driver acquiration methods by cute Gnome-VFS. libntfs:// now allows access by
> 
> 	gnomevfs-ls file:///dev/hda1#libntfs:/Windows
> 
> as a Gnome-VFS filter driver for the universal NTFS access without any kernel
> driver requirement.
> 
> 
> Would it be possible to include this handler to the main trunk 'gnome-vfs2' or
> possibly 'gnome-vfs2-extras'?

This doesn't look generally useful. The user doesn't typically have read
access to the device files, and doing these kinds of filesystem
operations concurrently in userspace seems dangerous to me. Since its
read-only it can't really break the fs, but it can surely break the vfs
module if something else changes the FS under it.

Some people might want to use it, but I don't think it should be
distributed with the main gnome-vfs tarball. (gnome-vfs-extras is just a
license workaround. It is GPL, since it uses samba.)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an unconventional bohemian dog-catcher in a wheelchair. She's a 
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