A few weeks ago we published a press release with Syabas about the integration of Tuxera NTFS into Syabas set-top boxes. Here’s a brief overview how everyone using Syabas products benefits from Tuxera NTFS inside. In the below pic you have Syabas’ Popcorn Hour set-top box at Tuxera labs ready to rock:
On the left you have two USB ports and on the right a removable hard drive bay circled. You can plug any NTFS-formatted portable hard drive or USB stick full of high-definition movies into the USB ports and it is plug & play. The same goes for the hard drive bay: take your NTFS-formatted drive from your Windows box and it works seamlessly with the Syabas media tank without any additional drivers.
We think Syabas’ example shows where the market is going. With both disk and file sizes growing, NTFS is currently the best — and in increasing cases the only — format option if you want your storage media to work plug & play with all computers from PCs to Macs and Linuxes as well as the latest consumer electronic devices.
Greetings,
This time Tuxera has record number of software releases! The topics:
- Stable NTFS-3G 2010.5.22
- NTFS-3G 2010.6.31-RC Release Candidate
- NTFS-3G for Mac 2010.5.22
- Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2010.6-RC Release Candidate
The stable NTFS-3G 2010.5.22 release is a minor update which addresses creating the missing usermap and secaudit utilities.
The software is available at
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
The new NTFS-3G 2010.6.31-RC release candidate contains exciting, major improvements, and the below changes and fixes:
- New: Full, transparent, read-write compression support.
- New: Two new mount options: compression and nocompression (default).
- New: Introduced windows_names mount option to enforce only Windows names.
- Change: Re-enabled compression in root directory.
- Change: Reversed default for showing/hiding hidden files.
- Change: Redefined default user mapping.
- Change: Marked files whose name has a dot initial as “hidden” if option hide_dot_files is used.
- Change: Renamed option default_permissions to permissions.
- Fixed use of utimensat() with external fuse older than 2.8.
- Fixed a hang when reading a corrupt compressed file.
- Fixed a possible crash when creating a stream.
- Fixed all reported and found compressed write related bugs.
Download it from the below web page
http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
The long awaited NTFS-3G for Mac 2010.5.22 is also here. Changes since the last release:
- Everything which is included in stable NTFS-3G 2010.5.22.
- Fix: NTFS-3G for Mac could “hijack” non-NTFS volumes in extremely rare cases, leaving them unmountable until NTFS-3g for Mac was disabled.
- Fix: The NTFS-3G for Mac preference pane will no longer leave zombie processes behind.
For more information please see
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/2010/06/ntfs-3g-for-mac-os-x-2010522.html
The latest release candidate of Tuxera NTFS for Mac, our high-performance commercial NTFS driver is out as well.
Changes since Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2010.1:
- Extended attribute support. Tuxera NTFS for Mac now supports storing Mac streams such as Finder information and resource forks as extended attributes, translating to Alternate Data Streams in Windows terminology. This means that NTFS drives will no longer be littered with ‘._’ (AppleDouble) files. Services For Mac attributes are used for the special attributes ‘com.apple.FinderInfo’ and ‘com.apple.ResourceFork’.
- Support for storing the Mac OS backup timestamp.
- All new features, enhancements and fixes included in stable NTFS-3G for Mac 2010.5.22.
Please see more at
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!
Tuxera Open Source Team
There has been a lot of discussion around exFAT on both IP and technical details. The basis is that SD Association has chosen exFAT as the file system in the next generation SD cards. Tuxera is here to provide the actual exFAT software for companies that embed the file system into their consumer electronics products. We published recently an Tuxera exFAT for Linux white paper at Interoperability vendor alliance to showcase the work we have done on exFAT. While the white paper is rather high-level, Tuxera is happy to provide more information on how the file system and licensing works for anyone interested. Tuxera exFAT is built on a portable and reliable code base and now available for Android, Linux and other operating systems.
Computex Taipei is finally over and done for 2010. A great event, with a lot of interesting electronics. It is clear the current semiconductor hotspot is here. From NAS systems to set-top-boxes, from cameras to phones, everything is packed together in Taipei or the nearby cities. In connection with Computex we did a joint press release with Microsoft on Tuxera exFAT for Linux.
The scenery in Taipei is unique. A quick escape from Taipei101 to Meokong for an afternoon tea shows everything from modern high-tech architecture to unreachable rainforest jungle in less than an hour. While it was raining almost every day I found the climate pleasant: warm but not too hot. You could walk with a T-shirt around the clock.
Greetings,
The new, stable NTFS-3G release contains the following changes:
- Fixed a compilation issue with uClibc.
- Fixed modifying the read-only flag on a directory.
- Fixed a bug in ACL inheritance.
- Fixed a bad condition for security descriptor upgrade.
- Fixed a possible index block with no key in $SII.
- Fixed the condition for executing utime() and utimensat().
- Fixed wrong flags when uid/gid are forced in mount options.
- Fixed a bad error checking when closing a compressed file.
- Fixed compiler warnings on OpenSolaris.
- Fixed conditional code for self-test in secaudit.
The software is available at http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Enjoy!
Tuxera Open Source Team
Greetings,
The new, stable NTFS-3G release contains bug fixes and functionality improvements:
- New: support Object Identifiers which are used by Windows for shortcuts and caused CHKDSK warnings when the target was deleted.
- New: nanosecond resolution file timestamps support.
- New: selective file timestamp modification by utimensat(2).
- New: make non-resident TXF_DATA attribute of root directory resident so Vista and later won’t complain about RAW partition.
- New: caching inodes.
- New: more efficient UTF8/UTF16 translations.
- Fixed setting archive bit on file and alternated data stream creation.
- Fixed setting reparse tags in parent directories.
- Fixed enabling permissions when no UserMapping file is found.
- Fixed an error return code in the main mount function.
- Fixed setting timestamp via extended attributes to be consistent between Windows and Linux view.
- Fixed option processing when uid, gid, fmask or dmask are present.
The software is available at http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Enjoy!
Tuxera Open Source Team
Nokia and Intel announced yesterday the merge of Maemo and Moblin called MeeGo. At face value, the news were not so surprising as Android is taking market share very quickly at the moment. In between the lines, the news strongly indicate that Linux will sooner than later become the dominant platform for cool phones. Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi says:
Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too
This is good news for companies like Tuxera. We are ready to support data portability on any Linux-based mobile device, be it running Android or MeeGo. For example shooting 1080p video into the device’s flash card requires in practice a file system change from FAT32 to exFAT. Tuxera exFAT works inside Android and MeeGo to manage that change.
Following the latest release, Tuxera NTFS for Mac is receiving positive reviews all over the net. For example movie and television industry veteran David Roth Weiss has in mind a use case where large movie files are post-produced on a Mac and then submitted to clients who have PCs:
Until Tuxera, the 4Gb file size limitation made it impossible to copy files over 4Gb to a FAT32 formatted drive, and NTFS formatted drives could only be read on Macs, writing to them was not possible. … that could be a real deal breaker for many editors on Macs. Tuxera changes all that, and creates a seamless method for delivering files on hard drives to your PC-based clients.
Earlier also MacObserver picked Tuxera as the NTFS solution for Mac.
As a final note, Softpedia gave us “100% CLEAN” award 
Happy New Year 2010 To All Tuxera Users!
The first open source NTFS-3G stable release of the year contains only important bug fixes:
- Fix: Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 couldn’t access a volume, file or directory if it had a non-resident TXF_DATA attribute despite being allowed by the NTFS $AttrDef attribute specification file. This scenario is very rare and hard to reproduce. Currently we have 1900 downloads a day and received only very a few such problem reports. Solution is also available from Microsoft. Please see more information at KB974729. Upgrade is recommended!
- Fix: NTFS-3G may crashed if a junction point referred to a non-ASCII file.
- Fix: Compilation errors on Mac OS X, OpenSolaris and openSUSE.
The source code of the latest stable driver is available at http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Many thanks to Microsoft, Jean-Pierre Andre, Erik Larsson, Anton Altaparmakov, Dominique Leuenberger, John G. Ireland, Virial, Elby, and Fuzzf.
Tuxera Open Source Team
We have been walking our legs flat the last four days at Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, meeting valued customers and partners from all over the world. Perhaps the biggest benefit one can get from a huge event like this — in addition to catching market trends — is to have face-to-face time with all those one has communicated with over email and phone during the year.
We decided CES is the right time to go public with our Windows CE work. The most common use case must be Windows CE powered set-top boxes and other consumer electronic devices with a USB plug. If I want to upload my videos and music from a portable NTFS-formatted hard drive into the box, it must read NTFS.
Another relevant market are cars, where Windows CE is gaining momentum. At CES, Microsoft had driven Fiats, Fords and Kias on their booth. Window CE is running the “infotainment” or entertainment systems in these cars. But what if I want plug in the car stereo my portable NTFS-formatted hard drive, which is full of MP3s? Yes, the system should read NTFS.
German computer magazine Apfeltalk (”Appletalk”) has reviewed Tuxera NTFS for Mac (Google translation). The product was thanked for its unbeatable performance and flawless operation compared to competition. Tuxera NTFS for Mac was recommended with a Silber-Award (”Silver Award”), something we are very proud of!
We are happy to announce the next stable NTFS-3G release. It is based on the latest Advanced NTFS-3G release which is already used by several distributions as the default NTFS driver. The changes include:
- New: Full file ownership and permissions support. The ownership and permissions of files are interoperable with Windows and conforms to the POSIX rules.
- New: POSIX ACL support. The ACLs are an extension to ownership and permissions as defined in POSIX.
- New: Optional Windows-type inheritance of ACLs.
- New: Full extended attributes support for all namespaces: user, system, security and trusted.
- New: Junction points support. The junction points and symbolic links created by Windows are seen as symbolic links.
- New: Access is possible to NTFS internal data like Windows style archive bit and file attributes. They are mapped to extended attributes for easier access.
- New: Compression write support: sequential writing to compressed files is supported.
- New: Support copying and restoring encrypted files without decrypting them.
- New: Support getting and setting high-resolution file timestamps.
- New: Support to get, set and remove DOS filenames.
- New: Tools for managing ownership, permissions and ACLs: secaudit checks the integrity of ownership, permissions and ACL, usermap gives help to configure ownership.
- New: Implemented setchgtime() on Mac OS X.
- Fix: Improved Windows junction and symlink handling.
- Fix: Improved ACL handling.
- Fix: Unicode normalization on Mac OS X.
- Fix: Implemented true fsync() on Mac OS X
- Change: Performance optimizations. Frequently used data are cached to improve speed. Space allocation for fragmented and sparse files has been improved.
We are also very glad to announce the new NTFS-3G lead developer, Jean-Pierre Andre who consistently demonstrated outstanding problem solving skills, taking great attention to the details and the ability to ensure the high-quality and reliability of the NTFS-3G driver in the past years.
The source code of the latest stable driver is available at http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Enjoy!
Tuxera Open Source Team
I was presenting today in Turin, Italy, at Europe Unlimited’s venture contest before an international investor and expert panel. At the end of the day I was thrilled to see Tuxera was awarded as the event winner! We are thus among the top 100 companies selected from different events around the Europe during the fall…
During the day I had interesting talks with investors and other entrepreneurs. One of the most positive and energetic persons was undoubtedly Rick Salmon who runs Xelerator out from Oslo, Norway. He answered to those who said you should start from local markets that when a company finds the right focus the market is and must be global. Cannot agree more. Tuxera’s market has been global from day 1.
Update 27.11. Here is a short video clip of the award ceremony and my interview after the event.
We have finally opened the Online Shop for Tuxera NTFS for Mac registration. Please let us know if there is anything in the store that could be simplified. We decided to start with an e-commerce and credit card operator but plan to simplify the process in the future with a fully integrated payment system. The shop currently accepts VISA, MasterCard and PayPal.
A new stable NTFS-3G release candidate is available for testing. It is based on the latest Advanced NTFS-3G release which is already used by several distributions as the default NTFS driver. The changes include:
- New: Full file ownership and permissions support. The ownership and permissions of files are interoperable with Windows and conforms to the POSIX rules.
- New: POSIX ACL support. The ACLs are an extension to ownership and permissions as defined in POSIX.
- New: Optional Windows-type inheritance of ACLs.
- New: Full extended attributes support for all namespaces: user, system, security and trusted.
- New: Junction points support. The junction points and symbolic links created by Windows are seen as symbolic links.
- New: Access is possible to NTFS internal data like Windows style archive bit and file attributes. They are mapped to extended attributes for easier access.
- New: Compression write support: sequential writing to compressed files is supported.
- New: Support copying and restoring encrypted files without decrypting them.
- New: Support getting and setting high-resolution file timestamps.
- New: Support to get, set and remove DOS filenames.
- New: Tools for managing ownership, permissions and ACLs: secaudit checks the integrity of ownership, permissions and ACL, usermap gives help to configure ownership.
- Change: Performance optimizations. Frequently used data are cached to improve speed. Space allocation for fragmented and sparse files has been improved.
We are also very happy to announce the new NTFS-3G lead developer, Jean-Pierre Andre.
The source code of the latest stable driver is available at http://www.tuxera.com/community/ntfs-3g-download/
Enjoy!
I am giving company presentations in various events. Tomorrow I will once again invade Moneytalks event in Espoo, Finland, this time with a seven-minute pitch.
Next month I will talk at Eurecan European Venture Contest semi-final in Turin, Italy. Date is November 5 and I expect it will be very exciting to network with central European companies.
Mac OS X comes with an NTFS driver but it does not support writing to NTFS volumes out-of-the box. The fix is here. We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Tuxera NTFS for Mac Trial. You can download it here. Please note that this is a release candidate version and the final one will be available before the 15-day trial period is over.
After installation, Tuxera NTFS becomes visible in your System Preferences.
There are many options you can play with. See the manual for explanations.
This is a release candidate version and a major upgrade from our previous open source NTFS-3G for Mac. Performance has been significantly improved along with other enhancements. We are pretty sure this is the fastest read/write NTFS driver you can have for Mac. We have successfully tested it on Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. Please send us any issues you find and we will fix them before the final release is out and available for purchase.
We are currently in IFA in Berlin – touted as the “Leading Business Event for Consumer Electronics and Home Appliance’s”. This is a huge exhibition where you can see everything from cutting-edge kitchen electronics to digital media. For us, it has been great to note we have created an impact building on the excellent foundation of our open source work. Seems that demand for file system compatibility is on the rise, and who are we to say no to that challenge…
It has been an interesting week. Our Microsoft PR went through the media pretty much as expected. Some coverage:
Brief answers to frequently asked questions so far:
- The agreements do not allow us to distribute end-user or open source exFAT drivers for Linux. We are communicating with Microsoft and hope to do that in the near future. A solution is needed before exFAT becomes a de facto standard.
- The agreements do not change anything regarding NTFS drivers. We will continue to distribute and support NTFS-3G both under GPL and commercial licenses.
Spent this morning at Microsoft’s BizSpark event in Espoo.
It was a three hour session with a number of short talks and enthusiasm to get Microsoft partners to work and cooperate together. Keynote speaker was Petri I Salonen who runs IAMCP and TELLUS International in the US. A well motivated talk from a seasoned software entrepreneur.
I also explained Tuxera to Artur Surov from Technolopolis Ventures and I am going to pitch Tuxera again 10.9.2009 in their MoneyTalks event.
Overall it was a surprisingly lively morning event and also productive for us. It was nice to get direct feedback on who we are and what we do at Tuxera. I am confident we can find opportunities with other partners in the Microsoft ecosystem in the near future.