Thursday, January 29, 2009

NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 Update 1

What's new:
  • All in the official release notes.

  • An NTFS-3G preference pane has been added after some time in development. The preference pane can be used to set NTFS-3G options and uninstall NTFS-3G. Open your System Preferences application after installation to try it out.
    [screenshot]

  • Filename normalization code has been added to increase compatibility with Windows filenames including western/greek filenames with accents, and korean filenames.
    Normalization is enabled by default, but can be switched off using the preference pane.
    Note that using normalization may render the accented/korean filenames that you have previously created using Mac OS X / NTFS-3G inaccessible, so please test which mode works best for your particular drive.

  • The driver now supports returning and setting the create date for a file/directory. (This has been integrated in the main ntfs-3g source tree.)

  • All file names returned that break the 255 byte limit are now truncated to 255 bytes to avoid breaking a directory listing.

  • Update 1: Fix for an issue with certain applications being unable to save files to the NTFS-3G volume. This was caused by not having a setbkuptime implementation. Fixed by creating a setbkuptime stub pretending to set the backup time (there is no such thing as backup time in NTFS).
Download:System requirements:
  • Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
  • MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.
The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

Information on how to install and use NTFS-3G for Mac OS X can be found in the User Guide.
If you are having problems with NTFS-3G, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Packaging, patching, Mac OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

Known issues:
  • After installing ntfs-3g, all NTFS drives will disappear from the "Startup Disk" preference pane. Disabling or uninstalling ntfs-3g brings them back. It seems that this issue can't be solved, but only worked around since the Startup Disk preference pane doesn't recognize file system drivers that are not provided by Apple.
    Possible workarounds:
    • Holding down the Option key during boot (or Alt for non-Apple keyboards).

    • Intel users only: Install the rEFIt boot manager for better control of the boot process.

    • Using the command line utility bless (see man bless for more information)
Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.1.1 Update 1 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.6
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

NTFS-3G 2009.1.1

What's new:
  • All in the official release notes.

  • An NTFS-3G preference pane has been added after some time in development. The preference pane can be used to set NTFS-3G options and uninstall NTFS-3G. Open your System Preferences application after installation to try it out.

  • Filename normalization code has been added to increase compatibility with Windows filenames including western filenames with accents, and korean filenames.
    Normalization is enabled by default, but can be switched off using the preference pane.
    Note that using normalization may render the filenames that you have previously created using Mac OS X / NTFS-3G inaccessible, so please test which mode works best for your particular drive.

  • The driver now supports returning the create date for a file/directory. (This has been integrated in the main ntfs-3g source tree.)

  • All file names returned that break the 255 byte limit are now truncated to 255 bytes to avoid breaking a directory listing.
Download NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 [ublio] (performance patches applied)
Download NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 [stable]

Packaging, patching, some OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, a PowerPC or Intel computer, MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.
This package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

Information on how to install and use NTFS-3G for Mac OS X can be found in the User Guide.
If you are having problems with NTFS-3G, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Known issues:

  • After installing ntfs-3g, all NTFS drives will disappear from the "Startup Disk" preference pane. Disabling or uninstalling ntfs-3g brings them back. I don't have a solution for this, but you can still choose your startup drive by:
    • Holding down the Option key during boot (or Alt for non-Apple keyboards).

    • Intel users only: Install the rEFIt boot manager for better control of the boot process.

    • Using the command line utility bless (see man bless for more information)
    If you have any information on a pretty way of solving this issue, I'd love to hear about it.

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.1.1 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.6
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c