Add NTFS module to FC1

by Hernan Fernandez (Contributing Writer)

Sometimes you need to access some NTFS partition(s) in your disk drive, and you maybe don't have the version 2.6 of the linux kernel (which already comes with native NTFS reading support and experimental NTFS writing support), this is an easy way to do that.

This is done by compiling the NTFS module and loading it as needed, this same process is described in detail here.
If you don't have already installed the kernel source, you can download it here (we will be using version 2.4.22-1.2129 for i586 during the example), and do the following:

$ sudo rpm -ivh kernel-source-2.4.22-1.2129.nptl.i586.rpm
$ cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2129.nptl
$ sudo make menuconfig

Go to the "File System" menu and select the "NTFS file system support" item, "exit", "exit and save". Then run:

$ sudo make SUBDIRS=fs/ntfs modules

Now your ntfs.o (the NTFS support module) is in /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2129.nptl/fs/ntfs, you copy it to your modules directory:

$ sudo cp /usr/src/linux-2.4.22-1.2129.nptl/fs/ntfs/ntfs.o /lib/modules/2.4.22-1.2129.nptl/kernel/fs/ntfs/

You should also use the depmod command (thanks to Camier Xavier for this tip):

$ sudo depmod

In order to tell the kernel that this new module is available. Then you can check by modprobing it:

$ sudo modprobe ntfs

If everything went ok, then you can now mount your elusive (until now) NTFS partition.

$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfs

Remember that the driver is READ-ONLY, if you try to write it will tell you that it's a read-only mounted file systems, but anyway, be careful. Also, you might want to add the command in your /etc/rc.sysinit to modprobe the ntfs module each time you boot the computer and add the proper entry in your /etc/fstab file for the NTFS partition.

More information about NTFS in Fedora Core 1 and precompiled RPMS can be found in Linux-NTFS.sf.net.