1NTFS-3G(8) System Manager's Manual NTFS-3G(8)
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6 ntfs-3g - Third Generation Read/Write NTFS Driver
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9 ntfs-3g volume mount_point [-o option[,...]]
10 mount -t ntfs-3g volume mount_point [-o option[,...]]
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13 ntfs-3g is an NTFS driver, which can create, remove, rename, move
14 files, directories, hard links, and streams; it can read and write
15 files, including streams and sparse files; it can handle special files
16 like symbolic links, devices, and FIFOs; moreover it can also read
17 transparently compressed files.
18 The volume to be mounted can be either a block device or an image file.
20 Access Handling and Security
22 By default, files and directories are owned by the effective user and
23 group of the mounting process and everybody has full read, write, exe‐
24 cution and directory browsing permissions. If you want to use permis‐
25 sions handling then use the uid and/or the gid options together with
26 the umask, or fmask and dmask options.
27 Windows users have full access to the files created by ntfs-3g.
29 If ntfs-3g is set setuid-root then non-root users will be also able to
31 mount volumes.
32 Windows Filename Compatibility
34 NTFS supports several filename namespaces: DOS, Win32 and POSIX. While
35 the ntfs-3g driver handles all of them, it always creates new files in
36 the POSIX namespace for maximum portability and interoperability rea‐
37 sons. This means that filenames are case sensitive and all characters
38 are allowed except '/' and '\0'. This is perfectly legal on Windows,
39 though some application may get confused. If you find so then please
40 report it to the developer of the relevant Windows software.
41 Alternate Data Streams (ADS)
43 NTFS stores all data in streams. Every file has exactly one unnamed
44 data stream and can have many named data streams. The size of a file
45 is the size of its unnamed data stream. By default, ntfs-3g will only
46 read the unnamed data stream.
47 By using the options "streams_interface=windows", you will be able to
49 read any named data streams, simply by specifying the stream's name
50 after a colon. For example:
51 cat some.mp3:artist
53 Named data streams act like normals files, so you can read from them,
55 write to them and even delete them (using rm). You can list all the
56 named data streams a file has by getting the "ntfs.streams.list"
57 extended attribute.
58
60 Below is a summary of the options that ntfs-3g accepts.
61 uid=value and gid=value
63 Set the owner and the group of files and directories. The values
64 are numerical. The defaults are the uid and gid of the current
65 process.
66 umask=value
68 Set the bitmask of the file and directory permissions that are
69 not present. The value is given in octal. The default value is 0
70 which means full access to everybody.
71 fmask=value
73 Set the bitmask of the file permissions that are not present.
74 The value is given in octal. The default value is 0 which means
75 full access to everybody.
76 dmask=value
78 Set the bitmask of the directory permissions that are not
79 present. The value is given in octal. The default value is 0
80 which means full access to everybody.
81 ro Mount filesystem read-only. Useful if Windows is hibernated or
83 the NTFS journal file is unclean.
84 locale=value
86 This option can be useful if your language specific locale envi‐
87 ronment variables are not set correctly or at all in your oper‐
88 ating system. In such cases, the national characters can be
89 made visible by using this option. Please see more information
90 about this topic at http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html#locale
91 force Force the mounting even if the NTFS logfile is unclean. The log‐
93 file will be unconditionally cleared. Use this option with cau‐
94 tion and for your own responsibility.
95 remove_hiberfile
97 Unlike in case of read-only mount, the read-write mount is
98 denied if the NTFS volume is hibernated. One needs either to
99 resume Windows and shutdown it properly, or use this option
100 which will remove the Windows hibernation file. Please note,
101 this means that the saved Windows session will be completely
102 lost. Use this option for your own responsibility.
103 atime, noatime, relatime
105 The atime option updates inode access time for each access.
106 The noatime option disables inode access time updates which can
108 speed up file operations and prevent sleeping (notebook) disks
109 spinning up too often thus saving energy and disk lifetime.
110 The relatime option is very similar to noatime. It updates
112 inode access times relative to modify or change time. The
113 access time is only updated if the previous access time was ear‐
114 lier than the current modify or change time. Unlike noatime this
115 option doesn't break applications that need to know if a file
116 has been read since the last time it was modified. This is the
117 default behaviour.
118 show_sys_files
120 Show the system files in directory listings. Otherwise the
121 default behaviour is to hide the system files. Please note that
122 even when this option is specified, "$MFT" may not be visible
123 due to a glibc bug. Furthermore, irrespectively of
124 show_sys_files, all files are accessible by name, for example
125 you can always do "ls -l '$UpCase'".
126 max_read=value
128 With this option the maximum size of read operations can be set.
129 The default is infinite. Note that the size of read requests is
130 limited anyway to 32 pages (which is 128kbyte on i386).
131 silent Do nothing on chmod and chown operations, but do not return
133 error. This option is on by default.
134 no_def_opts
136 By default ntfs-3g acts as "silent" was passed to it, this
137 option cancel this behaviour.
138 streams_interface=value
140 This option controls how the user can access Alternate Data
141 Streams (ADS) or in other words, named data streams. It can be
142 set to, one of none, windows or xattr. If the option is set to
143 none, the user will have no access to the named data streams.
144 If it's set to windows, then the user can access them just like
145 in Windows (eg. cat file:stream). If it's set to xattr, then the
146 named data streams are mapped to xattrs and user can manipulate
147 them using {get,set}fattr utilities. The default is none.
148 debug Makes ntfs-3g to not detach from terminal and print a lot of
150 debug output from libntfs-3g and FUSE.
151 no_detach
153 Same as above but with less debug output.
154
156 Mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt/windows:
157 ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
159 or
161 mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
163 Read-only mount /dev/sda5 to /home/user/mnt and make user with uid 1000
165 to be the owner of all files:
166 ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /home/user/mnt -o ro,uid=1000
168 /etc/fstab entry for the above:
170 /dev/sda5 /home/user/mnt ntfs-3g ro,uid=1000 0 0
172 Unmount /mnt/windows:
174 umount /mnt/windows
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179 To facilitate the use of the ntfs-3g driver in scripts, an exit code is
180 returned to give an indication of the mountability status of a volume.
181 Value 0 means success, and all other ones mean an error. The unique
182 error codes are documented in the ntfs-3g.probe(8) manual page.
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185 Please see
186 http://ntfs-3g.org/support.html
188 for common questions and known issues. If you would find a new one in
190 the latest release of the software then please send an email describing
191 it in detail. You can contact the development team on the
192 ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net address.
193
195 ntfs-3g was based on and a major improvement to ntfsmount and libntfs
196 which were written by Yura Pakhuchiy and the Linux-NTFS team. The
197 improvements were made, the ntfs-3g project was initiated and currently
198 led by long time Linux-NTFS team developer Szabolcs Szakacsits
199 (szaka@ntfs-3g.org).
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202 Several people made heroic efforts, often over five or more years which
203 resulted the ntfs-3g driver. Most importantly they are Anton Alta‐
204 parmakov, Richard Russon, Szabolcs Szakacsits, Yura Pakhuchiy, Yuval
205 Fledel, and the author of the groundbreaking FUSE filesystem develop‐
206 ment framework, Miklos Szeredi.
207
209 ntfs-3g.probe(8), ntfsprogs(8), attr(5), getfattr(1)
210ntfs-3g 1.2506 April 2008 NTFS-3G(8)