[ros-dev] Security policy for FAT partition driver?

[Phillip Susi]

Boaz Harrosh wrote:
  > 1. NTFS is already fully supported in ReactOS! By Microsoft. As 
shown by
> the Captive project. (You did merge back the Captive project Cache 
> manager and file system stuff right?) If ReactOS is to support WinNT 
> device drivers than that means, File-System device drivers as well. 
> Native Knoppix has Captive by default and you can ask my friends of how 
> happy they are for the stuff I saved them from a Bad and crushed XP HD.
> OK so it is not Implemented yet, but it is 85% and it could be if 
> someone wants to merge Captive subsystems.

Being able to load MS's ntfs driver is a good development goal, as doing 
so would demonstrate that our kernel really is compatible with NT and 
provide some means of accessing NTFS volumes from ReactOS with 
relatively little work.  Long term however, we still need our own 
implementation of a preferred filesystem.

> 2. I have not been to Wineconf-2005, but from the summery what I could 
> see is that one of the key notes was the Samba team. Now ReactOS is 
> going to use Samba right? Or are you going to do your own 
> Windows-for-Workgroups Implementation? Well Samba4 has all these things 
> missing from ext2/ext3, implemented on top, has an extra layer. They 
> call it VNTFS. By use of Samba you will get that for free. Wine is going 
> to use samba to replicate all the needed Win32 API(s).
> Now in order for ReactOS to use Samba it will need it's POSIX layer 
> pretty polished up.

No.  ReactOS will not use Samba anymore than we use WINE, which is to 
say, we might borrow bits of code here and there, but as a whole, the 
project is radically different than what we need.  Samba is a server 
that runs on Linux and emulates a lanman/cifs/whatever MS is calling it 
these days server.  What ReactOS would need is a real implementation of 
the lanman server on an NT kernel, not a hacked emulation on top of posix.

Heck, I am starting to wonder why we really need to support lanman at 
all when there are open standards supported by the OSS community 
already, such as WebDav.

> In summery what I think should be is: A new installation, out of the 
> box, installs ext3 with the Samba VNTFS layers and every thing is happy 
> and free. A user that wants to dual boot or Replace but not loose 
> his/her Windows NTFS HD, will be prompt for the Windows system 
> directory, the NTFS drivers, which are legally his (Hence the existence 
> of the NTFS partition), are copied and happily used by ReactOS. ReactOS 
> does not Create new NTFS partitions but other wise supports them to the 
> letter, by running MS drivers and utilities. It must do that to be true 
> to its goal, as stated on the front page: Run any Windows application 
> and any Windows-NT device driver. Including those from MS, as legally 
> owned by the user. For any other free use of ReactOS the native FS is 
> ext2/3 with Samba VNTFS extensions.

As I have said already, I do not believe that ext2/3 adequately supports 
the features we need, but then I do not completely understand how Samba 
manages to emulate the things it needs.  I will bet though that the 
emulation does not work as well as having the real thing.



Mark Junker wrote:
> That's much too complicated. Simply use ReiserFS 4 because it implements 
> all (!) features that are provided by NTFS.
> 

It does?  Maybe I should do some reading on it.  Can it really store 
alternate data streams and NT security descriptors?  What about on the 
fly compression?  Encryption?  Offline storage?