[ANNOUNCE] Linux-NTFS project, first public release

[Anton Altaparmakov]

This is to announce the first public release of the Linux-NTFS project 
hosted on sourceforge. The project page, where you can download the source 
code tar ball or rpm as well as precompiled RPMs for RedHat Linux 7.0 (i386 
architecture only), is:
         http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-ntfs/
You can also use the CVS server if you prefer...
Note, that you need the kernel headers installed to compile linux-ntfs 
source (probably you will need 2.4.x kernel headers and not 2.2.x ones but 
I haven't actually checked whether it works with 2.2.x or not).

The first release contains the all new and wonderful ntfsfix utility, which 
repairs some of the damage that the current Linux NTFS driver does when 
writing to an NTFS partition.

If you are doing any writing to NTFS partitions using the Linux NTFS driver 
this is an absolute *MUST* at the present time. It won't solve all 
problems, but it goes quite some way to prevent data corruption.

Run it after dismounting your NTFS partition in Linux but before rebooting 
into Windows NT/2000.

Note, after running the utility, when Windows boots up it will run an 
automatic chkdsk on the partition which will finish fixing the damage done 
by the Linux NTFS driver without corrupting the written data or any other 
data (as long as the Linux NTFS driver hasn't corrupted something beyond 
repair, obviously).

For amusement value, the first release also includes the ntfsdump_logfile 
utility which when used on an NTFS partition will display information about 
the journal ($LogFile) of that partition.

Finally both these utilities make use of the also included NTFS library 
which offer NTFS access to open source programs. It is currently under 
heavy development and the API is not going to remain as it is so don't use 
it yet for your own programs.

For everyone interested in NTFS on-disk structures and functionality, you 
will find the doc directory and especially the include directory to be of 
great interest as the later includes header files with all known to me NTFS 
structures. I still haven't gone through all the NTFS information that is 
available so they are considered work in progress but are fairly complete I 
thing. Most people will probably find that the $LogFile structures have 
never been published before anywhere and now we have the restart area 
structure definitions.

Any problems compiling/running the utilities, just give me a shout, or even 
better submit bug reports on the project page!

Enjoy!

Anton