Panther, Jaguar and the NT File System

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Something suspicious about Panther's NTFS support, isn't it?



"man mount_ntfs" says that the mount tool comes from FreeBSD, or, more precisely, from right here: http://iclub.nsu.ru/~semen/ntfs/



However, that page appears to be from 1999. Links to newer pages are provided, but all offline. And the man file mentions January '99 and FreeBSD 3.0. Then why didn't Apple add it earlier?



I believe that the man files, and maybe some of the utils provided are just there for temporary documentation, and do not really represent the actual implementation.



That one consists of a "mount_ntfs" file, a "ntfs.fs" file system bundle, a "ntfs.kext" kernel extension and two man files - which carry different names, but are identical ( the latter, ntfs.util.8, uses the same syntax as the former, mount_ntfs.8 ).



One might think that the additional non-FreeBSD stuff is for further integration with the Finder, and so on. Fine.



And after all, this is still read-only, right?



Not Panther-only, though. You probably read it here first: the NTFS drivers supplied with Panther work like a dream in Jaguar! Right now, I'm listening to an MP3 that's on a NTFS partition which is mounted through an ages-old LaCie FireWire enclosure.



I don't believe that Apple would offer read-only support for such an important and common file system. They're working on this. I'm confident. (And I suspect it'll work on Jaguar - whether they want it or not.)



Anyone care to try whether the updated UFS driver works in Jaguar?



[edit: typo]
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