[colug-432] CYGWIN and NTFS

[Rick Troth]

On 02/01/2014 10:46 AM, Rob Funk wrote:
> Last I heard, NTFS support on Linux was still kind of hackish. You might be 
> better off with a vfat space, plus separate storage spaces optimized for 
> each OS. Or just virtualize Windows entirely.

I've been looking for a way to map Windows SID codes in NTFS to UID/GID
in Linux space. It appears that the latest NTFS-3G supports it, but not
clear if that is available in the GPL version or just proprietary. In
any case, mapping SID cods to UID/GID does not seem to be automated in
the popular distros (yet).

CYGWIN does a slick job of mapping SID codes to UID/GID pairs, but it
can do that because it's sitting right there in a Windows context. The
last field within the GECOS field in /etc/passwd or /etc/group is
magically mapped to a Windows SID code. If you care to edit your UID/GID
values then things line up nicely with your Unix/Linux/POSIX systems.

VFAT is "safer" in that it doesn't carry ownership info. VFAT makes a
lot of sense for multi-system storage. (Just watch out for the Microsoft
tax. As I recall, they hit Android; not sure who else.)

-- R; <><