Fedora and NTFS

[Prometheus]

Hi,

I recently downloaded the Fedora 1 core, and wish to install it on my hdd. I have like 85 gig left of my 120, but the whole thing is NTFS. if i partion it, will Fedora recognize the NTFS partition, or do i need to get a new hdd that is formated in fat32. I would greatly appreciate any help, cause i dont want to screw up my nicely tweaked windows system, (though i still have my complaints). Thanks.

Prometheus

[linux]

this will help you

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

[Prometheus]

Thanks, but do i install the RPM before or after fedora?

[Prometheus]

One more thing, if i install fedora on a NTFS partition, will it be fully functional? by the sounds of the site it seems like it cant write to a NTFS volume, which would really limit the OS. Im just wonderin if it would be easier to get a smaller fat 32 drive and do a dual boot system that way. I would like to use NTFS, but if it is read only, its kinda pointless.

[foolish]

Here's the deal: Fedora is Linux, Linux isn't windows. Linux isn't some program you can install in windows either, Linux is its own OS and must be installed on your harddrive. The installation will create the partitions needed. What you have to provide is empty, as in unpartitioned, harddrive space.

The Fedora Linux distribution is based on Open Source software only. And it cannot support non-open source pieces of software, because then the owners of this software may sue Fedora and that we can't have. NTFS support is one such feature of Linux that Fedora can't include, because of American laws and the fear of lawsuits.

Fedora uses ext3 partitions by default. You can in theory, and it should stay in theory, install Fedora on almost any filesystem you want. If you don't know how, don't do it. Once more, if you don't know what to do, go with the defaults and read every little piece of instructions.

NTFS is not open source, because of this, its hard for developers to support it.

Fedora is Linux. Linux can only read from NTFS, not write. Write-support kind of works, but will cause breakage.

What you do is that you get a clean harddrive, or resize whatever partitions you have now so that there's empty space, and when you install Fedora, you choose to put it to the empty space of the harddrive, this is an option during the installation.

When Fedora is installed, you follow the instructions in the url listed above to install the read-only support of NTFS partitions.

For trading of files between a Linux and Windows operating system, one should use a FAT32 partition. As both OS's can read & write to FAT32.

You should read the slightly outdated Dual Booting guide for Red Hat Linux 9 found here: http://redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/install-guide/ch-x86-dualboot.html

This piece of documentation is made for Red Hat Linux, which is very similar to Fedora, which is RHLs succedor.

[Jman]

Read only NTFS is no problem. Writing to NTFS and being sure every part of the filesystem updated is what's hard. That's why write support is not stable yet. See the Linux NTFS FAQ (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html#3.2)

If you can afford another hard drive I recommend formatting that as a Linux ext3 partition when you install Fedora. That way you don't have to touch the NTFS partition. I dual boot this way.

[Prometheus]

Ok. If i take my hdd, make like a 15 gig partition, and attempt to install fedora on it, will it automatically reformat it for its own use? I imagine it would, but i dunno, thats why im askin. Thanks for all your help

[Thoreau]

yeah it will, there will be an option to "use only free space" eg, the 15 unformatted gigs