Fedora Account System
Red Hat Associate
Red Hat Customer
I am extremely upset that the NTFS3 module appears to have been dropped without any meaningful discussion, vote, consensus, or clear migration plan. NTFS3 is not some abandoned or experimental driver: * It is still supported and maintained. * It is a known quantity with substantial real-world use. * Existing systems, including users' `/etc/fstab` configurations, may explicitly depend on it. After booting into kernel 7.2.6, every one of my NTFS partitions failed to mount. That is a serious regression. The revived NTFS driver is not an equivalent drop-in replacement at this point: * Write support was only added relatively recently, and there is not yet enough real-world experience to have the same confidence in its data integrity. * Kernel stability is also a concern; filesystem-driver bugs can result in crashes or panics, not merely failed mounts. * It simply has not been battle-tested to the same degree as NTFS3. Removing a _mature_, actively maintained filesystem driver and effectively forcing users onto a less-proven replacement is an _extraordinarily aggressive change_, especially when it can _break existing installations_ immediately at boot. I am frankly appalled that a change with this kind of compatibility and data-integrity impact was allowed to land this way. Please restore NTFS3, or at the very least provide a clear technical justification for its removal, the process by which this decision was made, and a documented migration path for existing users.
Both filesystems can be enabled simultaneously as modules. There's nothing in the kernel preventing this: .config - Linux/x86 7.2.6 Kernel Configuration → File systems → DOS/FAT/EXFAT/NT Filesystems ────────────────────────────────────────── ┌────────────────────────── DOS/FAT/EXFAT/NT Filesystems ───────────────────────────┐ │ Arrow keys navigate the menu. <Enter> selects submenus ---> (or empty submenus │ │ ----). Highlighted letters are hotkeys. Pressing <Y> includes, <N> excludes, │ │ <M> modularizes features. Press <Esc><Esc> to exit, <?> for Help, </> for │ │ Search. Legend: [*] built-in [ ] excluded <M> module < > module capable │ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ <M> MSDOS fs support │ │ │ │ <*> VFAT (Windows-95) fs support │ │ │ │ (866) Default codepage for FAT │ │ │ │ (utf8) Default iocharset for FAT │ │ │ │ [*] Enable FAT UTF-8 option by default │ │ │ │ <M> exFAT filesystem support │ │ │ │ (utf8) Default iocharset for exFAT │ │ │ │ <M> NTFS file system support │ │ │ │ [*] NTFS debugging support │ │ │ │ [*] NTFS POSIX Access Control Lists │ │ │ │ <M> NTFS Read-Write file system support │ │ │ │ [ ] 64 bits per NTFS clusters │ │ │ │ [*] activate support of external compressions lzx/xpress │ │ │ │ [*] NTFS POSIX Access Control Lists │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ <Select> < Exit > < Help > < Save > < Load > │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
I've sent a follow-up email to Justin asking about this but he hasn't replied.
Looks like the fix is incoming: https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-ark/-/commit/972da12cd3519373902f7c6e6e2bcaf8570dc15b
(In reply to Julian Sikorski from comment #3) Thanks! And thank you Justin! Really appreciate the revert.