Which Filesystem Do You Use On Portable Media For Linux Systems? 569
An anonymous reader writes "Most people use MS filesystems on Disk-On-Keys, and portable hard drives, as these are readable from most machines. But this way you lose the files' permission information, which many times is very inconvenient (you must agree that having Ubuntu asking you whether to execute or display every text file or image you open from a DOK is annoying). Using 'regular' Linux filesystems like ext keeps the permissions, but may require using the superuser when switching machines (as the UIDs are different). So do any of you have a creative solution for this problem?"
ext3 (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't use OSes other than Linux, so the choice is simple. If I did have to interact with Windows or OS X I'd probably use FAT32.
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On all three of my computers, my user name is Rick and my UID number is 1000. With most recent versions of Debian or Ubuntu, the first user created is assigned the UID number of 1000. So in most cases, I would get the same user ID
Re:ext3 (Score:4, Funny)
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Amazing, that's the same as my luggage combinati..... oh....
Re:ext3 (Score:5, Informative)
OK, that was probably too much to assume, but I have been facing this particular problem a lot lately with accessing the host filesystem on VMs that I move around.
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The best answer is: "It doesn't matter."
I use whatever file-system happens to be on the portable media I happen to be using. I move data from Windows to Macs to Linux machines all day long and I never, ever have to think about which filesystem is on the portable media.
This is a good thing.
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The only complaints I have with FAT32 are:
4 GB limit - an actual issue now.
IOW: crappy. It can't even hold a single ISO for a 35-cent DVD+RW.
Possible corruption when power is cut - don't cut power in the middle of a write, design a hardware solution for when it does happen.
IOW: crappy, but you can avoid stepping in the crap if you're extra careful
MS owns it - deal with it.
IOW: Every time you buy a gadget that can write FAT32, you get to pay a crappy little tax to Microsoft.
Face it, FAT32 *is* just plain crappy, especially compared to the dozen or so available alternatives.
Don't be retarded, there are no alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
Look up the network effect.
Any filesystem which doesn't have universal availability is useless for this purpose. FAT works everywhere.
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That doesn't mean it isn't crappy. It especially isn't "in no way crappy", as the GP post asserted.
There are plenty of abysmal widely used "standards" we are stuck with for no other reason than the fact that everybody uses them. FAT32 is one of them.
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This will of course leave Linux users screwed and every on
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Or possibly get a stick that supports U3 on it. Put the windows drivers for reiser on the CD portion of the drive and format the storage are as reiser. Self-contained, multi-platform, permission preserving solution.
One such example of reiser drivers for windows.
http://rfsd.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:ext3 (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure I'd use Reiser - I hear it's murder on your USB drive.
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It bothers me because it hurts innocent code. The code didn't do anything wrong. The software he wrote didn't murder anybody. But now the only thing anybody ever talks about when they talk about the code is murder. The code deserves better than that.
That sounds like a joke, and it sort of is, but it also really isn't.
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It was pretty mediocre code to begin with. Interesting, but not anywhere near as revolutionary in practice as people seem to think. Add to that the fact that Reiser was it's primary maintainer and core developer and it's probably not worth bothering with. Especially since SSD's are likely to change the design of file systems rather dramatically in the next few years.
Plus, slashdot has a lot of karma to make up for all of their "just because they found his car with the seat ripped out and a huge spot of her
Re:ext3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Innocent code? ReiserFS? You cannot be serious!
I've trashed more than one Linux install (okay, two) by attempting to use reiser's own utilities to undelete some accidentally rmstarred files or other. Hang, draw and quarter the sonovabitch, that's what I say! Death's too good for him!
Oh and apparently he killed someone. Maybe he should pay a fine for that too, or something.
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That really depends on who you ask. Ask a proud KKK member, and they'll probably say the Teletubbies. Well, after the blacks, jews, and ... well, anyone not white. I'd say ask a Nazi, but ... well ... all that's left are very old men and the "neo-nazi"'s.
Not that I'm expressing any support or opposition for any of your selected choices.
Think of the Chilluns! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure I'd use Reiser - I hear it's murder on your USB drive.
It's easy to make fun of Reiser, the murderer, but don't forget, your laughs are at the expense of an innocent woman who was brutally murdered as well as two orphaned children.
If one cannot laugh about the bad things in life, then the world becomes a very bleak place.
Re:ext3 (Score:5, Insightful)
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You do realize that you lose NTFS permissions when copying from a Windows machine to external FAT-based storage, too, right? It's an issue that plagues every platform due to the inherent incompatibility with ACL's/UNIX permissions in FAT. This really has nothing to do with Ubuntu or any Linux distro, or even Mac OS - It's a common issue, and I believe Windows (XP and later) will also prompt to run anything from a FAT-based device, since the "this program is trusted" flag (I can't recall the proper name for
Re:ext3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah, using NTFS actually causes MORE problems for the Windows user?
Format a usb drive NTFS, and put some files onto it. Now, attempt to use this drive on another windows machine.
Notice anything funny about the file permissions? Heh, this is the same problem Linux has with UID/GIDs on removable media!
Interesting how the 'correct' fix for both is to use an antiquated filesystem.
I wonder if and when we will ever see an equivalent of FAT64, to get around file size issues.
Re:ext3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Threads like this remind me of why Linux will never make it as a mainstream OS.
I converted two people in my office to Ubuntu recently. One is an accountant. The other is an attorney. Both of them were shocked at how reliable and low-maintenance Ubuntu was. Both of them wanted to know why no one else knows about this. The only thing they needed help with was installing the proprietary media codecs (and I should point out all I did was send them links). They installed Ubuntu themselves, and they regularly tell me how happy they are with their computers now.
How many people have you converted to Linux recently?
Re:ext3 (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear this bullshit often, and thats what it is, bullshit.
You're the bullshitter. Get out into the real world. There are billions of people, thousands of languages, thousands of accounting standards. Many are not supported by windows, many are in the third world where the price of windows is a deal breaker, many are conforming to standards you've never heard of, many want software they control, many detest DRM and all it stands for, and many are thinking long term and not the short-term, blinkered thinking you're professing.
M$ marketing and people sucked in by their propaganda like to claim Windows is the only possible alternative however it's just a dishonest attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophesy.
In reality windows is only one of a number of alternatives, nothing lasts forever, and one size does not fit all.
---
I never look at alternatives because I'm going to be running the same OS for the rest of eternity.
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Oh man, you mean the accounting database system we maintain on Linux for our customers doesn't actually exist? I hate parallel realities.
Re:ext3 (Score:5, Insightful)
This thread is not evidence of Linux being deficient compared to Windows; portable media doesn't usually have intact and correct permissions on Windows systems either! The difference here is that Linux users are pickier about the issue while Windows users, on average, don't care (if they even know about and understand the problem to begin with).
Re:How do you deal with Linux destroying file date (Score:5, Informative)
I used GParted to reformat my external hard drive as an EXT3 partition. GParted is an easy to use, free point-and-click GUI type front end for free Parted partitioning program. I have also used GParted to reformat several small USB keys as EXT3. GParted will can also create other types of partitions, such as FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, JFS, XFS, Reiserfs, and Reiser4 partitions.
If I were using the tar command to bundle my directories and files up into a tar ball or a compressed tar ball, the permissions and dates and everything would have been preserved inside the tar ball. In that case I could have stored the tar ball on a FAT32 partition, without loosing permissions or the correct dates. But instead of doing that, I have been using the rsync command to create a backup copy of all the directories and files and everything onto the external USB hard drive.
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So there is no straightforward way to keep track of file creation times under POSIX systems? (nevermind translating between the conventions, if some obscure one is possible for POSIX, under dualboot scenario) That's a very dissapointing to me, since I find absolute file creation dates very usefull when navigating the filesystem...
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Well, now ... (Score:4, Insightful)
So do any of you have a creative solution for this problem?
Isn't the whole point of this "problem" that there shouldn't be a solution to the problem?
But... there IS a solution! (Score:3, Informative)
It's like the OP asks for a solution to a problem when using Linux, and then there's a grand cacophony of people denying that there is a problem! (when there is, why else was it presented?)
There are two solutions that I use:
1) Use tar to zip up the files with attributes, Then copy the .tar or .tgz file to the USB drive. Both Winzip and Archiver read tar files, so they can still be read on Win/Mac. Disadvantage? You can't easily save changes...
2) create a loopback file on the USB drive, format Ext3, then mou
Re:Well, now ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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So do any of you have a creative solution for this problem?
Isn't the whole point of this "problem" that there shouldn't be a solution to the problem?
That was my thoughts exactly, I don't think the guy understands how security works. If you remove the qualifications to access a file to perseve only -- say -- the need for user name to match, then what the hell kind of nonsense security is that?
This may be a case where the physical security (possession of the portable media) is much more important than the filesystem permissions. Generally speaking, the portable media itself is a storage-only device and does not have the mechanisms in place to enforce file permissions, relying entirely on the machine to which it is connected for such tasks. Therefore, if you are not using encryption, then you should always assume that anyone with physical control of the media is going to be able to obtain the fi
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Well thanks for that, I feel much more reassured. I thought I was missing something.
Other than the point of the original question, that it. Zen again, can one miss what isn't there?
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If you remove the qualifications to access a file to perseve only -- say -- the need for user name to match, then what the hell kind of nonsense security is that?
True. However, there are other systems that use user name and key. NFSv4 uses user name and kerberos. Does a similar cross-platform solution exist for removable media?
Personally, I just mount vfat with my UID. Granted, that means no security for my files. However, there isn't anything currently on the key that I care about. If I were to put something sensitive on it, I'd encrypt the drive.
I have thought about using ext2, as it has a driver for Windows. However, you do get into the UID matching problem.
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File permissions security isn't all that useful on removable media like it is on the boot drive (and other internal drives).
If a drive is portable, you can bypass any security permissions by simply plugging it into a computer where you are root, or compiling your own kernel or filesystem driver to ignore permissions.
The default behavior for external drives (esp. flash drives) should be to completely ignore ownership permissions, with the option to enforce them if you really want to. Anything more strict and
Poratibility (Score:5, Interesting)
All my systems at home are Linux-based, ext3. NONE of my neighbors, family, or work associates have that, so it's a no-brainer.
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Since we're talking about portable media, I want it portable and use fat32.
I use FAT32 even on the HDD partition shared between Linux and Windows on my office machine. Other file systems have just caused me headaches with permissions in the past, though I suppose that's just because I wasn't managing them properly. I suppose I could change my ways, but it's easier just to use FAT. If that's ill-advised of me, maybe someone will tell me so :-)
I'm not sure what I'm going to switch to when >4 GB files become more prevalent ...
Re:Poratibility (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Linux NTFS drivers are working well now. That's what I use on my shared partition.
Except if the portable drive is pulled out of the machine without being properly unmounted. Then the filesystem is unclean, and the Linux NTFS driver doesn't know how to replay the journal. So the thing becomes unusable until you stick it into a Windows machine and then remove it properly. Of course, you shouldn't be pulling it out without unmounting . . . that can cause serious data loss on some cheap USB drives, apparently, regardless of journaling.
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There has only been one situation where I've had to move or copy a file over FAT32's filesize limit: Moving either a VMWare or VirtualBox image from one machine to another. It those cases, I upgraded disks and kept the same OS (some form of Linux), so it's not been a problem, since I had both the old and new disks connected to the same system. I would imagine it would be the same with any WinXP/Vista/7 box. You have
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Of course, the problem with FAT32 is that it cannot accommodate file sizes larger than 4GB. In this day and age, carrying a few DVD ISOs around is quite common, so FAT32 doesn't quite cut it. What is needed is some kind of file system that doesn't use any permission, but is a bit more modern than FAT32.
I just use (Score:5, Insightful)
NTFS (Score:5, Funny)
Use NTFS?
Re:NTFS (Score:5, Informative)
Mods: not funny. I've formatted large USB sticks as NTFS before. Works fine for r/w on Linux and Windows, not so much for Macs, because OSX doesn't have native write support for NTFS.
Re:NTFS (Score:5, Informative)
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Native, as in I can toss a stick over to a Mac-loving coworker and expect it to work without intervention.
If Apple includes ntfs-3g in OSX 10.7, that's different.
On that criterion, NTFS on Linux fails too, since not all distributions include r/w NTFS support by default. At least in both cases it's fairly simple to install the necessary software.
Hopefully future versions of OS X will have read/write NTFS support built-in.
Can't format MS FS with non-admin in Mac OS X 10.5 (Score:3, Informative)
Has anyone notice TrueCrypt v6.2a won't let you format MS FS (for a container) in a non-admin account? It only works with full administrator account. That doesn't makes sense!
ntfs-3g for mac (Score:5, Informative)
Sure it does.
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
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You need to mount it async; I don't know if there's an alternate driver for it (or just a mount option) but it speeds up transfers by about 30x
HFS+ (Score:4, Informative)
For the most part, I still use FAT32 since everything can read it. Simple as that.
However, Linux has no issue reading HFS+ and my main machine is a Mac so it does the trick too.
FAT (Score:2)
I like to live dangerously.
uid issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever think of just making the uid's on your various machines match?
James
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Mount noexec (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't want things to look executable, mount it with the noexec option (which you could put in fstab). That way nothing on the device, even with FAT, will appear executable.
Since you are moving the files between computers, is the permissions loss really a problem? Aren't you just going to copy things off anyway?
If you need to limit access to certain users, you could use encrypted loopback file systems. But really, why not just use separate USB keys for different sets of permissions.
FAT is a lowest common denominator for a reason. If you want to interact with Windows, your only other real choice is NTFS, which isn't a bad option.
Sure you could use Ext3, or Reiser, or BTFS, or something else, but then you can't use your flash drive on any machine, thus defeating it's purpose.
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An excellent solution, and probably not a bad idea anyways, for security reasons.
And if you do want to preserve permissions, well, there's always tar or zip, both of which can make archives that preserve ownership and rights.
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If you don't want things to look executable, mount it with the noexec option (which you could put in fstab). That way nothing on the device, even with FAT, will appear executable.
I just tested this out, and it does not work. mount(8) says that mounting something noexec means that execution of files on the filesystem is not allowed. However, that does not necessarily mean that the execute bit will be unset. Instead, on my system the execute permission bit is set, but attempting to execute something gives me "permission denied."
I've had the problem the questioner asks about before; the cleanest solution is to use "fmask=133" in the mount options, as described in mount(8). (There are a
UID's (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be nice if the default was to pick a random arbitrary and large UID so the chance of UID clashes would be remote.
Re:UID's (Score:5, Informative)
It would be nice if the default was to pick a random arbitrary and large UID so the chance of UID clashes would be remote.
You know what would be great? If someone made a daemon for mapping UID's between machines [die.net]. That'd be fantastic, but I'm sure no one else has thought of such a thing.
I use the FAT filesystem most sticks come with (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I use the FAT filesystem most sticks come with (Score:4, Insightful)
I invite anyone who claims pure water is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
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I invite anyone who claims pudding is a pollutant to sit in $240 of it [youtube.com] for 10 minutes. Aaawww yeah.
Re:I use the FAT filesystem most sticks come with (Score:4, Insightful)
sofar wrote:
>mrcaseyj wrote:
>>
>>> C3ntaur wrote:
>>> I invite anyone who claims CO2 is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
>>
>> I invite anyone who claims pure water is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
>
> I invite anyone who claims pure oxygen is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes
I invite anyone who claims pure vacuum is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
pollutant? It's the room (Score:5, Funny)
sofar wrote:
>mrcaseyj wrote:
>>
>>> C3ntaur wrote:
>>> I invite anyone who claims CO2 is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
>>
>> I invite anyone who claims pure water is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
>
> I invite anyone who claims pure oxygen is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes
I invite anyone who claims pure vacuum is not a pollutant to sit in a room full of it for 10 minutes.
You are all wrong: in all these fatal scenarios, the common element is the room. Those do-gooders in Copenhagen should be negotiating an agreement on room reduction.
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DOK (Score:5, Insightful)
What? Who on earth calls it a Disk on Key?
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um, RDOK?
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Even five years ago, I don't recall this term being remotely popular.
tarballs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:tarballs (Score:4, Informative)
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FAT32 out the window (Score:4, Interesting)
Until very recently, I had a 32GB USB flash card formatted with FAT32. Not that I find FAT32 particularly nice, but it was practical, as it enabled me to easily swap my stuff between my home Windows game PC, my Linux PC, my work Linux laptop and my work Windows PC. The problem was never Linux - the problem was Windows and a lack of ext3 support (I develop under Linux and need the chmod permissions, which all turns to crap when I copy it over to FAT32, which doesn't retain them)
Focus on the WAS. It WAS practical, until I was faced with the rather interesting prospect of copying an 7.5GB dual-layer DVD master image onto the stick. As we know, FAT32 has a file size limit of 6GB which causes all kinds of interesting problems.
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man split
(I didn't find out about this one until a few months back, and I've been using *looks at RMS* GNU for years.)
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AES256 encrypted NTFS (Score:3, Interesting)
Portable Media? What's that? (Score:2)
I use git or tortoisegit for my file transfer needs. There is also a samba share for my xbox to access movies and music. If that doesn't cover it, I have my flash drive somewhere with a portable copy of winscp.
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Whoops, I guess I forgot to answer the actual question. I use ext3 with fat32 on that random flash drive :)
ext2 (Score:2)
Really? FAT32. Because it works on everything.
But it's possible to use ext2 and not lose cross-machine function ; there are filesystem drivers for Windows that are able to mount ext2. Of course, you have to pre-plan which machines you're going to use, and have administrator rights on them to install the driver, and it's not nearly as mature as the FAT32 driver is for both Linux and Windows.
So, FAT32. Shame about the filesize limits, but there you go.
Hardly a Linux-only problem. (Score:5, Informative)
This is hardly a problem unique to Linux, although as you point out Linux does have its own special requirements that may make using FAT32 a bit problematic.
My home network is a combination of Mac OS X clients and Linux servers (Debian is so easily made so Mac friendly...). I have a USB key that I don't tend to use too often (online storage has removed much of that need), but I did decide at one point that easy interoperability between OS's was important, while at the same time needing OS-specific support from time-to-time, for specific applications and data.
My solution? I formatted my key for FAT32, and then created some disk images on the key formatted them to whatever OS-specific format was suitable (HFS+, ext3, etc.). By leaving sufficient room on the main FAT32 volume, I can readily store platform-neutral data, and inside the images I can store whatever OS-specific data (such as applications) that don't need to be accessible on every system I encounter.
This does require an extra mounting steps. In OS X, it entails plugging in the key, and then double-clicking on the DMG file to mount it. In Linux, I have to mount the ext3 image using the loop pseudo-device. Of course, this is only necessary if attempting to access data in one of the OS-specific formatted images: accessing shared data merely requires mounting the key itself (generally automatically handled by the OS).
It's hardly perfect, but it does mean you can have one key that can have both shared and OS-specific data on it for as many OS's as you'd like to have at your disposal.
Yaz.
Explore2fs (Score:4, Informative)
If you have rights to install drivers on the windows machines you use, you can try the EXT2 driver available on www.fs-driver.org [fs-driver.org]. It will mount your EXT2/EXT3 volume as a drive letter so you can transfer files between partitions.
fat32 and tarballs or loopback ext3 (Score:2)
fat32 works well enough for storing tarballs should I need to go Linux->Linux with permissions and all that. Most of the time though the UID/GID clashing isn't worth going so far as a tarball unless I need permissions preserved. I rarely transfer mixed permissions files, it's usually some form of document or media so again... fat32.
I'd use a loopback ext3 if I really needed to not use tar for some weird reason.
native filesystem (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer to just dd my data to the raw device. If there's more than one file, I might pipe it through tar first. This process makes it much more portable and universal.
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What? You run Windows without a full Cygwin installation?
Jules@minerva ~ /dev
$ ls
fd stderr stdin stdout
How do I access raw devices using cygwin?
ext3 (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 3 Seagate FreeAgent 1 GB USB disks. They come with NTFS by default on them. Per disk:
1. I make a LUKS dm_crypt volume on it (for which support is well integrated into GNOME and hal in Fedora and Ubuntu.. just plug in and it pops up a dialog asking for the password).
2. I mkfs an ext3 filesystem on the encrypted volume.
I use this encrypted setup out of experience, having dropped an older 750GB USB disk from a height. It works from time to time and I have to physically destroy it because contents on it are not encrypted and otherwise anyone who finds this disk in the trash can mount and browse it.
Forget FAT/VFAT, make your own. (Score:3, Informative)
First of all, FAT is patent encumbered and Microsoft's willing to go to court to protect it; so that's out. That includes the old UMSDOS file system Linux had at one time.
Someone needs to make a good file system that matches FAT, but is more extensible. A good choice is ext2 now... if we dropped a few things that wouldn't work nicely. Like device nodes, pipes, and Unix sockets. Like ownership, since it's assumed that the person mounting the system would own the files on it, along with groups. Simply access restrictions; they wouldn't apply.
This will simplify the structure a bit, which is a nice bonus and could let it be put on floppies. In other words, it's a light, anonymous, extended file system. LAEFS.
I got an .h file. Anyone want to help develop it as a FUSE driver?
Installable File System (Score:5, Informative)
I had the exact same problem a while back. My solution was a little less straightforward than some, but is still simple enough. Basically, I leverage the freeware software Ext2 IFS [fs-driver.org], which installs software onto Windows that allows it to recognize the contents of Ext2/3 partitions.
Basically, I have my disk formatted with two partitions:
On the FAT32 partition, I place the latest version of Ext2 IFS. When I access the system on my main Linux box, I just mount / use the Ext3 partition.
When I visit friends or family and I plug it into their Windows box for the first time, Windows recognizes the FAT32 partition, so I can install the Ext2 IFS software that I put onto that partition. From then on (and every subsequent access), Windows automatically mounts it!
Windows doesn't reflect the Ext3 permissions, but if you have physical, portable access to an unencrypted hard drive, those mean nothing anyway. And, of course, make sure to ask friends and family before installing filesystem drivers :)
What about UDF? (Score:5, Insightful)
UDF doesn't have a 2 GB file size limit like FAT32 and seems to be well supported [wikipedia.org] by most operating systems. I don't really have any experience with it but I just formatted my USB stick with UDF just to see how it goes. /dev/disk/by-id/usb-LEXAR_JUMPDRIVE_ELITE
mkudffs --media-type=hd --vid=MyDiskLabel
It works fine in Linux.
Re:What about UDF? (Score:5, Informative)
I experimented with UDF a couple of years ago. As always, Windows is the problem. No matter what I did, Windows did not see the thumbdrive as a drive letter. And Google didn't show up any useful pages either.
They're talking about fixing this (Score:3, Interesting)
At present you run into an issue where you could mount an ext2 or ext3 drive as a certain user, write files to it, and be unable to do anything with those files if you have a different UID on a different system.
A kernel patch has been proposed to allow you to remap ext2/3 UIDs [lwn.net] when mounting a disk so that a standard UID can be mapped to whoever mounts the drive. This way, you'll be able to use ext2 or ext3 as your flash filesystem, preserve capitalization (another vfat weak point) and permissions (modulo the remapping) and still have decent interchange between different Linux boxes where you have different UIDs.
UFS/FFS (Score:3, Funny)
Far superior to FAT32 and Ext2 is the Unix File System (UFS). Unparalleled reliability, extended from the early days, and still going strong. Also known as the Berkley Fast Filesystem (FFS).
Damn near everything supports it. Solaris/SunOS, HP-UX, Linux, BSD, MacOS, etc. And thanks to a couple of projects on SourceForge.net dedicated to writing UFS/FFS drivers for Windows, it's available there, too.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of minor variations on the format... Differing types of disklabels (partition tables), big/little-endian byte-swapping, et al. I find sticking to BSD-created UFS/FFS file systems works best.
Still, it's an incredibly solid filesystem, widely compatible, available, and just generally has everything you could want.
Use HFS+ (Score:3, Interesting)
HFS+ Can be read by both Linux and Mac. Preserves permisisons and such, and in SnowLeopard, Apple gently provided bootcamp drivers so that XP/Vista/7 can read HFS+ too. No hacks requiered, no big risk involved. There, solved that for ya!
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0% of the time, it works every time.
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However, I also have a third, even older computer, which uses some older version of Slackware. By default, it assigns a UID numbe