[Wine] Re: Is there a difference ...?

oiaohm
Tue, 03 May 2011 04:30:03 -0000

> Doh123, how is running a program off an NTFS partition asking for trouble?
Ntfsprogs seems to handle it just fine. I know that NTFS doesn't let you
mark a file as executable, and that the filesystem is susceptible to
fragmentation, but you should just be able to tell it to run rather than display
and be good. It shouldn't cause destruction. I think there might even be an
NTFS defrag tool for Linux, I'd have to check.
>


Really NTFS is fairly good on fragmentation resistance as long as drive remains
under 90 percent full.  And shake defrag will work okish on it.  I have had to
use shake defrag from Linux on a ntfs drive that was that badly fragmented that
windows defrag tools would not even attempt.

But executable bit is not the only file system part Ntfsprogs is missing.
There is a serous difference in mmap handling compared to ext2 ext3 or ext4 from
the ntfs3g driver.  These differences do cause failures in applications when on
ntfs with wine that don't happen when on ext2 ext3 or ext4.  So for us doing
support we want tested on ext filesystems so we know if the issue you are seeing
is ntfs3g issue or wine with every file-system.

ntfsprogs still lacks a 100 percent working fsck to fix up in case of power loss
or other case of lose of operation.  So after power loss booting into windows
can be required to restore access to the ntfs drive.  Ok what cause a power loss
like event.  Wine finding a video card driver defect so crashing the kernel.
So not a wise combination.

Ntfs3g what you have to use for writing support also has a high cpu load than
using a native ext3/4 as a loop back on ntfs3g.  (Yes I know that is wrong but
its the way the numbers work out).   Really running loop back on top of another
file-system should work out slower but this is one of these odd cases.

Using NTFS is also not good to keep the separation between windows installed
executable and wine installed executable.  This can turn into major problems for
wine and windows.   Windows loading up an application installed by wine can
completely destroy windows at times.  Yes we don't like getting into trouble
for destroying copies of windows.  Also applications installed in windows and
copied to wine can also have issues due to missing register entries and other
things.

Next issue is fools.  Who here that wine works on NTFS so points the wine c
drive to there windows c drive then wonder why next boot of windows nothing
works.

And the most annoying of all(we have this with Linux  a little).  Is that wine
place holder executable get detected and deleted by lots of Commercial
anti-virus software  so causing malfunctions you will not otherwise see.  There
are particular commercial anti-viruses that run under Linux that should not be
used with wine as well.    But there are options under the commerical
anti-viruses for Linux to exude wine directories from being scanned by them and
to use something like clamav to cover the areas that are touchy.   Not so simple
in a Windows environment to have particular directories monitored and scanned by
different anti-virus products.   So this leads to major problems due to a lack
of flexibility on the windows side.   Secuirty you don't want to leave
directories unmonitored.

Simply for all sanity.  Its better to act like wine does not work on NTFS at
all.  That way anyone running it on NTFS is doing so at there own risk can
cannot be recommend it as working so we don't get more complaints from the
issues that will crop up in time.