NTFS Read Write Support¶

The mityarm-linux-v3.2 branch of the kernel provides read-only NTFS filesystem support via the NTFS_FS and NTFS_RW config options. While the NTFS_RW option seems to add write support, it is actually severely limited as stated in the documentation:

The only supported operation is overwriting existing files, without changing the file length. No file or directory creation, deletion or renaming is possible. Note only non-resident files can be written to so you may find that some very small files (<500 bytes or so) cannot be written to.

In order to have "useful" read/write access to NTFS partitions (e.g. a USB flash drive formatted in Windows), you need to compile and install the ntfs-3g software package.

Please note that these instructions are provided as a guide. You will likely need to modify the file locations, paths, and compiler prefix for your specific build environment.

1. Download the ntfs-3g tarball from Tuxera
   

   # wget https://tuxera.com/opensource/ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2016.2.22.tgz
   # tar zxvf ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2016.2.22.tgz 
   # cd ntfs-3g_ntfsprogs-2016.2.22/
   

2. Setup your cross-compile environment (this example is using the TI SDK):
   

   # source /opt/ti-sdk-am335x-evm-08.00.00.00/linux-devkit/environment-setup
   # export PATH=/opt/ti-sdk-am335x-evm-08.00.00.00/linux-devkit/sysroots/i686-arago-linux/usr/bin:$PATH
   

3. Configure, make, make install (this example assumes you want to install to a NFS filesystem on the host machine):
   

   # ./configure --host=arm-linux-gnueabi
   # make
   # export DESTDIR="/opt/ti-sdk-am335x-evm-08.00.00.00/NFS/targetNFS" 
   # make install
   

4. Once installed on the MitySOM filesystem, you can mount ntfs partitions using:
   

   # cd ~
   # mkdir ntfsmnt
   # ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 ~/ntfsmnt
   

Tuxera also has documentation online for further information.