Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 3:11 pm by Brady Wilson

Mount NTFS USB drives read-write in FreeBSD

This write-up was tested on FreeBSD 6.2 and 6.3.  As of this writing the NTFS-3g release was 1.2531.
Please let me know if you run into typos or other technical issues when implementing this.

1.) Update the ports collection. 
 
Setup the update:

# cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portupgrade
# make install clean
# cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup
# make install clean
# cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile /root/ports-supfile
# pico /root/ports-supfile

Make it look something like this:

#######################################################
*default host=cvsup1.us.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs  tag=.
*default delete use-rel-suffix
#comment the below line if you don’t want to update the /src directory
#src-all
#update /usr/ports
ports-all tag=.
#######################################################

Run the update:

# cvsup -L 2 /root/ports-supfile
# portsdb -Uu

Update installed ports:

# portversion -l “<”
# portupgrade -arR
# pkgdb -F

2.) De-install any existing packages.

Older versions don’t work properly for auto mounting in /etc/fstab.  In addition older versions of the kernel module and libraries won’t work with the latest version of fusefs-ntfs.

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-kmod
# make deinstall

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-libs
# make deinstall

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-ntfs
# make deinstall

3.) Install the necessary packages.

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-kmod
# make install clean
# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-libs
# make install clean
# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-ntfs
# make install clean

4.) Load the kernel module

Enable the kernel module

edit /etc/rc.conf and add:

fusefs_enable=”YES”

Start the module

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/fusefs start

5.) Attach the USB drive.

Attach the USB drive and check your syslog for the detection of the drive:

# tail -n20 /var/log/messages

Example:

Sep  8 09:19:47 servername kernel: umass0: Seagate FreeAgentDesktop, rev 2.00/0.00, addr 2
Sep  8 09:19:47 servername kernel: da1 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
Sep  8 09:19:47 servername kernel: da1: <Seagate FreeAgentDesktop 100D> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-4 device
Sep  8 09:19:47 servername kernel: da1: 40.000MB/s transfers
Sep  8 09:19:47 servername kernel: da1: 476940MB (976773168 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 60801C)
 

6.) Mount the USB drive.

# mkdir /mnt/usbstorage
# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usbstorage

If you get an error about the partition being hibernated:
Error opening partition device: Operation not permitted

Failed to mount ‘/dev/da1s1′: Operation not permitted

The NTFS partition is hibernated. Please resume and shutdown Windows properly, so mounting could be done safely.

Use:

# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usbstorage -o remove_hiberfile

That error message does sometimes point to a conflict in module and library versions though and cannot be fixed until the versions installed are correct.

Notes:

· If you want a persistent mount, be sure to add a mount entry to the /etc/fstab file or a post boot script such as rc.local.

· If you are done with the USB storage drive:

# umount /mnt/usbstorage

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