News: 0001597084

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Linux NTFS3 Driver Will Now Support Timestamps Prior To 1970

([Linux Storage] 6 Hours Ago Pre-Epoch)


While [1]NTFSPLUS continues to be developed as a new and modern NTFS open-source driver for Linux systems, at the moment [2]NTFS3 from Paragon Software remains the most capable NTFS file-system driver within the mainline kernel. For the Linux 6.19 merge window a variety of fixes have landed for this driver.

While likely to not see too much use in practice, the NTFS3 driver with Linux 6.19 can now support timestamps prior to the year 1970. The first change noted for NTFS3 in the new kernel is pre-Epoch timestamps support for handling dates prior to the start of Unix time on 1 January 1970. NTFS3 had been relying on an unsigned 64-bit type but has now switched to a signed 64-bit type for coping with pre-epoch timestamps. The issue was raised by the xfstests program testing the file-system. But for anyone that may happen to have pre-1970 timestamps, Linux 6.19 fixes things up for NTFS3.

NTFS3 in Linux 6.19 also now disables readahead for compressed files, support for the NTFS3_IOC_SHUTDOWN ioctl, checking minimum alignment when performing direct I/O reads, and a variety of fixes. Nothing too particularly notable otherwise for the NTFS3 activity in Linux 6.19.

[3]This pull request is now merged for providing the latest NTFS3 support in the mainline Linux kernel.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/NTFSPLUS

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/search/NTFS3

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251203124228.6082-1-almaz.alexandrovich@paragon-software.com/


Brief History Of Linux (#8)
Let's all holler for Hollerith

In 1890 the US Congress wanted to extend the census to collect exhaustive
demographic information on each citizen that could be resold to marketing
companies to help pay for the newly installed gold-plated toilets on
Capitol Hill. Experts estimated that the 1890 Census wouldn't be completed
until 1900. It was hoped that an electronic tabulating machine using
punchcards designed by Herman Hollerith would speed up the process.

It didn't quite work out that way. An infestation of termites ate their
way through the wooden base of Hollerith's machines, and then a wave of
insects devoured several stacks of punchcards. Also, some Hollerith
models had the propensity to crash at the drop of a hat... literally. In
one instance, the operator dropped his hat and when he reached down to
pick it up, he bumped the machine, causing it to flip over and crash.

These flaws meant that the census was delayed for several years. However,
the system was, in the words of one newspaper reporter, "good enough for
government work", a guiding principle that lives on to this very day and
explains the government's insistence on using Windows-based PCs.