Strange Ubuntu/Vista Compatibility Bug, Solved

Walter Vos writes "Since I've been running Vista and Ubuntu in dual boot with a shared FAT32 partition for my personal folders, I've been seeing some strange compatibility issues between these two operating systems. Somehow Vista locks the folders on the FAT32 partition that are used for folders like Documents, Downloads, etc. A blogpost I wrote gives a detailed description of the problem and a fix for it."

FAT32

[Enderandrew (866215)]

NTFS-3G works pretty well. I'm not sure FAT32 is really necessary any more.

Re:FAT32

[duckInferno (1275100)]

Stay away from FATMAN239. It nuked my hard drive.

Re:FAT32

[phantomfive (622387)]

Wow, google is good. I just did a search to find out exactly what fatman239 is, and the only thing that came up in the results was your post.

Re:FAT32

[FlyByPC (841016)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_man [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

ntfs-3g worked pretty well for me, except for I/O intensive applications. aMule with all its I/O on a NTFS partition of VMware with all the virtual machine's file on a NTFS partition as well were pretty slow. Actually I think VMware was so slow that 99% of the CPU was actually taken up by ntfs-3g, meaning VMware was crawling.

Re:FAT32

[MindlessAutomata (1282944)]

I kept all my mp3s on an NTFS partition, and it made amarok incredibly slow for searching through files and even listing them when I wanted to expand a tree. It, of course, also was using up a ton of cpu power. Other intensive programs were causing me other problems, mostly more cpu usage quirks.

NTFS-3g is not perfect and I'd recommend steering clear of relying on NTFS on linux for heavy or day-today usage. I haven't used ubuntu on windows but I can imagine it would give a negative impression due to performance issues. For pulling off the occasion file off another partition, though, it works well.

When I moved all my mp3s to an ext3 partition, all the problems with amarok went away instantly.

Re:

[coolsnowmen (695297)]

I kept all my mp3s on an NTFS partition, and it made amarok incredibly slow for searching through files and even listing them when I wanted to expand a tree. It, of course, also was using up a ton of cpu power. Other intensive programs were causing me other problems, mostly more cpu usage quirks.

I found the default database backend slow, so switching to a better DB could be the solution. Even if your files are on NTFS, try having a postgres DB backend(on your fs of choice) and it should speed up your library searching.

Re:

[MindlessAutomata (1282944)]

I thought of messing with that stuff but was too lazy to do it.

Re: Ubuntu and NTFS

[szaka (1061180)]

NTFS-3G changes rapidly and historically Ubuntu included an old, lower performing version of the NTFS-3G driver. However the one in Ubuntu 8.04 should be ok.

Amarok has a documented performance issue with NTFS-3G: http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#dd [ntfs-3g.org]

The NTFS-3G web site has many tips what could be the problem for high CPU usage: http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#cpu100 [ntfs-3g.org]

Sometimes NTFS defragmentation makes a magic.

The focus of the NTFS-3G development is reliability and functionality over performance. The performance optimizations started only recently and the current development versions perform close or sometimes surprisingly even better than ext3.

Re:FAT32

[niteice (793961)]

There's a couple of ext3 drivers for Windows (one open-source, one not) that also work pretty well, so you can go both ways.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know they're only ext2 drivers. Of coarse, you can usually mount ext3 as ext2 without any issues.

Re:FAT32

[kiddygrinder (605598)]

ext2 works pretty well for ext3 drives so they don't care enough to do it. Anyone who does care about ext3 that much i'd guess probably doesn't care that much about windows.

IFS Kit; Vista 64 Test Mode

[tepples (727027)]

What keeps people from implementing ext3 support for Windows? The Linux source code is obviously available, so are Windows ext2 drivers reimplementations that aren't using existing code? Or is there some deeper problem?

For a while, Microsoft once charged roughly $1,000 for the "IFS Kit" used to develop installable file system drivers. To work around this, programs such as "Explore2fs" had to act like WinRAR and 7-Zip, where you don't really mount a partition but you can still drag files in and out. (The price appears to have dropped since then.) For another thing, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista put an annoying "Test Mode" banner in all four corners of the desktop if the user installs a device driver that hasn't been signed by a publisher who pays an annual fee of at least $200 to a commercial certificate authority trusted by Microsoft.

Re:

[ozphx (1061292)]

At least $200! Thats almost two developer hours of money!

Pretty certain you can chuck whatever cert you want in the trusted root store / disable this behaviour.

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

At least $200! Thats almost two developer hours of money!

In what city of what state/province of what country?

Re:

[tepples (727027)]

Do you have a source for [Test Mode in Windows Vista 64-bit], or did I get lucky? I would love to get a screenshot of it and set it as my co-worker's wallpaper.

My source is Kernel-Mode Code Signing Walkthrough [microsoft.com].

Re:

[CheshireFerk-o (412142)]

http://www.diskinternals.com/ [diskinternals.com] they have a freeware ext2/ext3 proggy called 'linux reader' ive had it installed for quite a few months. plays my ext3 mp3storage in winamp just fine.

Re:

[Daengbo (523424)]

Oddly enough, there's the exact corollary in Linux. Mounting NTFS filesystems often fails because they weren't unmounted properly in Windows. The solution is ... to boot into Windows and mount the filesystem.

Re:FAT32

[Ruie (30480)]

I think he would have the same problem with a ntfs drive.

The issue is that his Linux user setup and Windows user setup are different.
So when he mounts the partition all files are owned by root (as shown on the screen), and some files have public permissions turned off - a reasonable thing.

Thus what he needs to do is specify the owner of the files using uid=value
option in /etc/fstab (uid value can be found via "getent passwd", it is numeric).

For more info read "man mount" carefully.

For external drives bigger than 2 GB

[tepples (727027)]

NTFS-3G works pretty well. I'm not sure FAT32 is really necessary any more.

Unless you have an SDHC card that you're sneakernetting between your PC and a digital camera, or you have an external hard drive that you're sneakernetting between a Windows or Ubuntu PC and either a Mac or an Xbox 360. Cameras, Macs, and game consoles tend not to work with NTFS out of the box.

Re:

[macshit (157376)]

NTFS-3G works pretty well. I'm not sure FAT32 is really necessary any more.

FAT may suck, but it's the only thing understood by a lot of embedded software like BIOSes, device firmware, etc...

Indeed, for that reason it seems like FAT may very well be more useful than NTFS. FAT will probably stay around for quite a while as a "braindead, but simple and widespread" exchange format, but the only excuse for NTFS is windows.

Re:

[Mattsson (105422)]

I've had NTFS-G3 totally destroy two NTFS partitions with the Vista version of NTFS 3.1
This seem to differ a bit from the XP version of NTFS 3.1

Damn

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

For a moment there I thought somebody had fixed Ubuntu bug one [launchpad.net].

I suspsect that...

[Psychotria (953670)]

if the owner/group permissions were set properly in fstab an easier solution would prevail

Not a vista bug

[phorm (591458)]

This isn't a "Vista" bug, as I've seen it happen frequently on a dual boot machine that is only XP+Ubuntu (no Vista)

I ran into this not that long ago and was really stuck scratching my head for awhile, as the fstab settings were definitely correct. However, after a little "chmod -R" magic on the entire FAT32 partition, it reset the recalcitrant permissions and everything worked fine.

Re:Not a vista bug

[Qzukk (229616)]

It's not a bug, it's old knowledge getting flushed out of the general awareness of the public. FAT has a read-only bit and Linux knows about it, it's in there along with the system and hidden file bits:

#define ATTR_RO 1 /* read-only */

(linux/msdos_fs.h)

Re:

[Chris Pimlott (16212)]

Glad to see I'm wasn't the only one scratching my head about the claim that FAT32 doesn't support the read-only attribute.

Damn kids these days, don't remember having to use ATTRIB...

Re:Not a vista bug

[greg1104 (461138)]

This started in XP actually. The problem is that Microsoft sets the read-only attribute on the special folders that get custom views. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549 [microsoft.com] for information about the root cause of the problem reported on this blog. Fixing it on the Windows side requires one to go all old-school and use attrib; cracked me up.

Linux newbie finds FAT32 file perms don't work...

[by Anonymous Coward]

... gets page linked from slashdot.

Well, at least I adblock.

Re:Linux newbie finds FAT32 file perms don't work.

[A.K.A_Magnet (860822)]

Yeah seriously, why the fuck is this on Slashdot? I'm not the "stuff that matters" whiner type but either timothy never used a Linux distro and thinks this is newsworthy, or this is the slowest news day ever :).

Re:Linux newbie finds FAT32 file perms don't work.

[jamie (78724)]

either timothy never used a Linux distro and thinks this is newsworthy, or this is the slowest news day ever

Timothy was last seen putting Ubuntu on an XO. He's been using Linux at least since I met him in 1999.

It's August, every day is a slow news day :)

Re:

[SirLurksAlot (1169039)]

Ha, I was so thinking the same thing. The gist of this "story" is that they had a problem getting Vista and Ubuntu to work together (*mock gasp* I've never heard of such a thing!) and then proceeded to fix it. *yawn* To top it all off the linked article is a blog post from the submitter. Give me a break.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

You obviously never really did fit in here. I mean, a true slashdotter would have titled his post "Last post!"

not news

[spandex_panda (1168381)]

user discovers chmod ... blogs about it ... boooooring.

oh my god.

[nawcom (941663)]

The Effectiveness of the Ubuntu Forums [ubuntuforums.org]

(The link this person gives in his blog post)

I swear to christ, reading that page made me want to kill a kitten.

Mod parent down - it's not true!

[by Anonymous Coward]

It actually cannot suck dick. That's my main issue with it. I downloaded and installed Ubuntu with the full expectation of some dick sucking and it never came to pass. What the fuck is that about? You, sir, are a liar and a fraud.

Re:Mod parent down - it's not true!

[teh moges (875080)]

Ubuntu can easily handle a FAT16, but has trouble handling a FAT32. It needs more practice I suppose.

Re:Mod parent down - it's not true!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least it doesn't fuck you in the ass like Vista does.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Vista fucks you in the ass, and Ubuntu fails to suck your dick...

Good thing I stick to good ol' DOS, the only OS that won't sexually abuse you, it seems.

Re:

[Alsee (515537)]

I've gotten used to putting up with all sorts of nasty behavior from Windows over the years, and I guess I could eventually reluctantly learn to get used to the ass fucking.... but I had to dump Vista when it insisted on shitting in my mouth after each ass fucking.

-

Just Delete The Egomaniac.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I'm having a problem with permissions between Vista and Ubuntu. What should I do?

Adopt a philosophy of ideological inflexibility, intolerance, ignorance, immaturity, and narcissism?

...or...

Run a shell script or two?

Decisions, decisions...

Re:

[Psychotria (953670)]

I am wondering why dual boot is "lame"... I dual boot for a couple of reasons. A) For games; B) For Windows apps that I need for work (although, I avoid this now by having XP in vmWare); C) For cross-platform debugging/test (again, vmWare to the rescue); and D) my microscope software, which, alas I can't get to find the scope using vmWare... I have no idea why.

I have 3 machines at home plus my laptop. And I still dual boot on my main machine. Living life in two worlds aint that bad.

Re:you are hollow,

[grantek (979387)]

It's lame because games should work under linux. It's not necessarily you being lame, it's either game developers being lame by not porting their games, Windows being lame that it's hard for the Wine crew to implement it with the exactness needed for games, or both, if the lame games are using bits of Windows that are lame when stuff like OpenGL could help.

It's lame that people feel like they're being held hostage by an operating system that they don't otherwise want, and it's lame that MS is making money off that. If you actually want Windows for one reason or another, then it's not lame at all.

Re:

[thephotoman (791574)]

This is why I really think a version of XNA ported to Mono would be totally awesome. Ideally, it'd allow binary compatibility between games written against that API on any platform.

Of course, this is probably a pipe dream.

Lack of Free (or even shared-source) drivers

[tepples (727027)]

It's not necessarily you being lame, it's either game developers being lame by not porting their games

Up until very recently, it was also video card manufacturers being lame by not making OpenGL drivers for Linux that the community can help debug. But ATI, one of the two makers of chipsets for video cards,[1] plans to stop being lame [linux.com]. And some people would claim that it's distribution maintainers being lame by not providing more thorough binary compatibility across multiple families of GNU/Linux distributions. ("What's an LSB again?")

[1] Intel GMA is not available on a card.

Re:

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

Well I guess your grandma isn't using XP....

Re:As my grandmother used to say

[Your.Master (1088569)]

Nor has she ever gone outside in her life.

Re:As my grandmother used to say

[SeekerDarksteel (896422)]

Let's just make it red, blue, AND green should never been seen.

Hey, did it just get awfully dark in here?

Re:

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

But Ubuntu is the most used distros and it can be easily said that it is a Ubuntu bug rather than testing default installs of Gentoo/Slackware/SuSE/Fedora/Arch/etc.

Re:

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

But which is easier to test for someone who isn't a kernel hacker, A) a default Ubuntu or B) the latest kernel. But what about compile-time flags, who's kernel tree, etc. By basing it on a standard Ubuntu install, the average person can still report kernel bugs without messing around with kernel hacking.