Re: NTFS-like streams?

[Jeff V. Merkey]

The way NTFS does this trick is to create special attributes and chain
them from the MFT for a given file entry.  Linux has nothing like it at
present in it's standard file systems, and the linux NTFS driver is only
a bare skeleton of NTFS, it does not implemen all the NTFS
capabilities.  Under the covers of NTFS, these attributes are actually
LCN (logical cluster number) file chains with some fancy headers and a
name.  

:-)

Jeff 

Urban Widmark wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Christopher Vickery wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'm interested in implementing a system that associates
> > meta-data with inodes, and would like to know if it has
> > already been done or is in the works.  NTFS allows you to
> > create multiple "streams" within a file.  "echo hello > x:y"
> > creates a zero-byte file named x with a "stream" named y
> > containing hello.  If you copy, move, rename, or delete x
> > then y goes with it.  Canonical example is x.bmp contains an
> > image and x.bmp:thumbnail contains a thumbnail of the
> 
> Erm. What is the point?
> If you read x.bmp do you eventually start reading x.bmp:thumbnail?
> 
> % make_thumbnail.sh < x.bmp > x.bmp:thumbnail
> 
> Now you have two files
>   x.bmp
>   x.bmp:thumbnail
> :)
> 
> To create something you can copy, rename or delete with one operation, put
> it in a directory.
> 
> > image.  So far as I can tell, the NTFS for Linux project is
> > not under active development, and ext3, reiserfs, jfs, etc.
> > do not deal with this issue.  Am I missing anything?
> 
> Re ntfs; Anton Altaparmakov is doing "Odd Fixes" (see MAINTAINERS). If
> such files can be created on ntfs then it would perhaps be nice to be able
> to access them. I'm sure he will appreciate all help.
> 
> Re others; it's not unixy ...
> 
> If you look at such a file exported with SMB what does the client see?
> Can you do "echo hello > //server/share/x:y" ?
> 
> /Urban
> 
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