Read/write LINUX filesystem (ext4) under XP?

[graysky]

Is there any way XP can read/write to a LINUX ext4 partition?

[CoffeeFiend]

ext4? Great way to lose data

[graysky]

ext4? Great way to lose data

...how do you figure?

[majormashup]

do you need this as a long or short term solution?

if it is short term I would run a small VM on vsl(very small linux) mount the physical drive and give it network sharing with write access using samba.

[graysky]

Interesting idea... I was hoping for a windows-native method though...?

[majormashup]

hmmm... in that case I'm out of ideas, you can probably get away with only giving the afforementioned VM a minimal amount of resources if all else fails. I'll keep an eye on this thread as it sounds like quite a curious issue..

[CoffeeFiend]

...how do you figure?

The ext4 developer (Ted Tso) says so himself

[jaclaz]

Read is one thing and Read/Write is another.

Ext4 Fs is - up to a certain point - "forward compatible" with Ext2 and Ext3:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4

and as such, ext2fsd should be able to Read it with no problems:

http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/

As well, "trivial" write operation such as updating a small text file should be possible, as well as copying one at the time files, I wouldn't set a paging file on a ext4 partition, nor use multithreaded apps to write to the filesystem.

Basically you will access the ext4 as it was an ext2 FS:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9449

jaclaz

[graysky]

Thanks for the link but it's not ext4 that is to blame according to his writings. Users can fix this by adding a flag to their /etc/fstab entry for the affected partitions. (Can't find the link but if you're really interested, google it).

UPDATE: it's the mballoc flag.

See this link for more.

Edited April 8, 2009 by graysky

[submix8c]

(fyi - your avatar doesn't show. suggest putting it in your MSFN profile instead of linking to it.)

[cluberti]

(fyi - your avatar doesn't show. suggest putting it in your MSFN profile instead of linking to it.)

Yup. Looks like it's in a protected directory on the site: