[gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Hi list

By chance I found an external 3 TB disk for a bargain and now I’m planning its
partitioning. I am thus looking for a filesystem that doesn’t necessarily
need file permissions to function, the reason being that I might want to take
the disk to other people in order to copy files around. That’s why I don’t
really want to use ext4 (my FS of choice for everything else).

My current media HDD (1 TB) runs on FAT32. But this is not up-to-date anymore
due to the 4 GiB filesize limitation. NTFS is also not a good option (for me
anyway), because whenever I copy a file to it, ntfs-3g sets its mtime to
now(). This makes it impossible to do automated syncing. Also, it loads the
CPU pretty heavily when being written to.

Windows compatibility is not a must, but a nice-to-have. That would reduce my
remaining choices to ExFAT, I presume.

What’s your advice? Thanks a latte.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Alan McKinnon]

On 26/06/2013 15:09, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Hi list
> 
> By chance I found an external 3 TB disk for a bargain and now I’m planning its
> partitioning. I am thus looking for a filesystem that doesn’t necessarily
> need file permissions to function, the reason being that I might want to take
> the disk to other people in order to copy files around. That’s why I don’t
> really want to use ext4 (my FS of choice for everything else).
> 
> My current media HDD (1 TB) runs on FAT32. But this is not up-to-date anymore
> due to the 4 GiB filesize limitation. NTFS is also not a good option (for me
> anyway), because whenever I copy a file to it, ntfs-3g sets its mtime to
> now(). This makes it impossible to do automated syncing. Also, it loads the
> CPU pretty heavily when being written to.
> 
> Windows compatibility is not a must, but a nice-to-have. That would reduce my
> remaining choices to ExFAT, I presume.


That's how I see it too.

I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
was the only box that could use them...

exfat ticks more boxes than any other option


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:22:54 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
> was the only box that could use them...

You could use ACLs to make everything world read/writeable.

Sledgehammer, meet nut :)

> exfat ticks more boxes than any other option

Makes sense to me too


-- 
Neil Bothwick

SEX ON TV HAS TO GO! <<<<<<<<>>>>>>>> I keep falling off!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Florian Philipp]

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Am 26.06.2013 16:22, schrieb Alan McKinnon:
> On 26/06/2013 15:09, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
>> Hi list
>>
>> By chance I found an external 3 TB disk for a bargain and now I’m planning its
>> partitioning. I am thus looking for a filesystem that doesn’t necessarily
>> need file permissions to function, the reason being that I might want to take
>> the disk to other people in order to copy files around. That’s why I don’t
>> really want to use ext4 (my FS of choice for everything else).
>>
[...]
>>
>> Windows compatibility is not a must, but a nice-to-have. That would reduce my
>> remaining choices to ExFAT, I presume.
> 

BTW: What's the Linux status on that one?

> 
> That's how I see it too.
> 
> I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
> was the only box that could use them...
> 

Isn't group id 100 defined as the users group on most Linuxen nowadays?

chgrp 100 $mount && chmod 2777 $mount

should work reasonably well.

Regards,
Florian Philipp



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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 06:40:02PM +0200, Florian Philipp wrote:

> >> Windows compatibility is not a must, but a nice-to-have. That would reduce my
> >> remaining choices to ExFAT, I presume.
> > 
> 
> BTW: What's the Linux status on that one?

Well, the German Wikipedia says that a stable 1.0 came out in January.
It’s “only” a FUSE fs, but so is NTFS. I’ll do some testing with it.

> > That's how I see it too.
> > 
> > I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
> > was the only box that could use them...
> 
> Isn't group id 100 defined as the users group on most Linuxen nowadays?
> 
> chgrp 100 $mount && chmod 2777 $mount

That still leaves UID.  I want it to “just work”[TM] and never encounter
any problems when I can least use them, and never have to check any file
attributes.

> should work reasonably well.
> 
> Regards,
> Florian Philipp

I’ll keep the uid and gid bit on the stack.  I would disable the x bit
though.  Executables are lime in DIR_COLORS, overriding every other
colouring (e.g. red archive, green text and purple media files). *g*

I’m more concerned about the behaviour of automounters. And I faintly
remember some user-centric setting as to what the default chmod of new
files is, so I would have to do some chmod -R from time to time.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service.

Everyone speaks of saving energy. I save mine.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Alan McKinnon]

On 27/06/2013 03:33, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 06:40:02PM +0200, Florian Philipp wrote:
> 
>>>> Windows compatibility is not a must, but a nice-to-have. That would reduce my
>>>> remaining choices to ExFAT, I presume.
>>>
>>
>> BTW: What's the Linux status on that one?
> 
> Well, the German Wikipedia says that a stable 1.0 came out in January.
> It’s “only” a FUSE fs, but so is NTFS. I’ll do some testing with it.
> 
>>> That's how I see it too.
>>>
>>> I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
>>> was the only box that could use them...
>>
>> Isn't group id 100 defined as the users group on most Linuxen nowadays?
>>
>> chgrp 100 $mount && chmod 2777 $mount
> 
> That still leaves UID.  I want it to “just work”[TM] and never encounter
> any problems when I can least use them, and never have to check any file
> attributes.
> 
>> should work reasonably well.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Florian Philipp
> 
> I’ll keep the uid and gid bit on the stack.  I would disable the x bit
> though.  Executables are lime in DIR_COLORS, overriding every other
> colouring (e.g. red archive, green text and purple media files). *g*
> 
> I’m more concerned about the behaviour of automounters. And I faintly
> remember some user-centric setting as to what the default chmod of new
> files is, so I would have to do some chmod -R from time to time.
> 

The Unix filesystem model simply does not allow you to do that easily -
it is designed to do something else entirely and do that thing well

You can't even override the uid/gid/perms at mount time. The central
premise is that the user must set those values on his own files whenever
he wants to and the rest of the universe must fall into line with those
wishes...

Look at what it takes to do something simple like set the default perms
on a new file in a shared directory to be 664 - you need to get dirty
with POSIX ACLs, and then a simple umask run in a shell session
overrules all of that.

exfat does what you want - it was designed to "just work" on the very
large removeable media we have nowadays (think 7G movie files) and
bypass all the nonsense like "does the user that created this file even
exist on the machine that is reading it?"

It also works pretty well


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Alan McKinnon]

On 26/06/2013 17:59, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:22:54 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 
>> I used to use ext4 for external media but quickly found that my notebook
>> was the only box that could use them...
> 
> You could use ACLs to make everything world read/writeable.
> 
> Sledgehammer, meet nut :)

I have a pathological inability to type chomod 666

Everytime I try it a background watchdog process in my brain kicks in
and a few million more neurons die a nasty death :-)



> 
>> exfat ticks more boxes than any other option
> 
> Makes sense to me too
> 
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 27 Jun 2013 10:23:56 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> > You could use ACLs to make everything world read/writeable.
> > 
> > Sledgehammer, meet nut :)  
> 
> I have a pathological inability to type chomod 666
> 
> Everytime I try it a background watchdog process in my brain kicks in
> and a few million more neurons die a nasty death :-)

Use an alias :P


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Ultimate memory manager; Windows, it manages to use it all..

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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:13:55AM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> exfat does what you want - it was designed to "just work" on the very
> large removeable media we have nowadays (think 7G movie files) and
> bypass all the nonsense like "does the user that created this file even
> exist on the machine that is reading it?"
> 
> It also works pretty well

Hm.. there seems to be one problem for me: I installed exfat-utils and
there is no resize utility. Since the media partition will be the
biggest, and other partitions will be added later (whose size I don’t
know yet), resizing would be crucial.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service.

Just don’t ignore it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Filesystem recommendation for external media storage

[Helmut Jarausch]

On 06/27/2013 10:13:55 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> exfat does what you want - it was designed to "just work" on the very
> large removeable media we have nowadays (think 7G movie files) and
> bypass all the nonsense like "does the user that created this file  
> even
> exist on the machine that is reading it?"
> 
> It also works pretty well
> 

Hi,
my comment might be completely off topic, but it might, as well, be a  
serious warning.

I have a Garmin GPS device which has an internal storage of 4GB and an  
additional SD card
with a capacity of 32 GB. The device can be attached to a USB port.

Now, when looking from (a virtual) Windows 7 OS, the file systems on  
both of these are reported
as FAT 32. In addition running CHKDSK doesn't reveal any problems.

Looking from my native GenToo (on the very same hardware, without  
Windows running),
the smaller 4GB file system looks just nice (files and meta data being  
identical to what Windows has reported)


The larger file system (declared as vfat in /etc/fstab) gets mounted  
without any problems.
But an 'ls' commands shows question marks all over the place except for  
few single characters.
In addition, in the beginning, when there were less than 4GB data on  
that SD card, the file system
looked just fine under Linux, as well. Only afterwards, like now, when  
it holds more than 20GB data,
I cannot use it any more from my Gentoo system.

Does anybody have an idea what's going on or where to report this bug?

Many thanks,
Helmut.

P.S. I have tried to mount that file system as exFAT under GenToo but  
that was rejected.