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NTFS-3G compiled for PPC

feelingsupersonic

feelingsupersonic

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 2, 2020
79
105
Texas
Sorry, I know I have posted a few threads in the last week. I am just getting back into my old PPC fleet after almost a year of working abroad. I think most of us have some NTFS drives we work with and need a 3rd party solution to write. I pay for Paragon on my Intel machines but PPC as usual has to cope with whatever is floating around from a long time ago.

My interest is the latest released NTFS-3G driver, which supports Tiger and onward:

Download NTFS-3G for Mac | MacUpdate

Download the latest version of NTFS-3G for Mac for free. Read 46 user reviews and compare with similar apps on MacUpdate.
www.macupdate.com www.macupdate.com

However it appears to be source code. I'm out of my comfort zone on this one, and went with the last compiled installer I could find which was from 2010. But with all the talent on here I was wondering if someone was interested in making a 10.4/10.5 installer from this source code and submit it? I think a lot of folks who are trying to use their PPC Mac in modern times would consider it a standard item to install.

The 2010 version seems to work but there seems to be quite a bit of development between 2010-2017 on this code. Just throwing it out there if anyone is feeling like taking on a challenge.
 
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I have had very bad experiences with ExFAT drives.

Most of the trouble seems to occur when these drives are disconnected improperly. This is of course never a good idea, but OS's crash, USB ports fail, and humans make mistakes. And while all non-journaled filesystems (including FAT32 and standard HFS) handle this scenario poorly, either exFAT or OS X's implementation of exFAT seems to be much worse.

After an exFAT drive is improperly disconnected, OS X will frequently refuse to remount it for a time, sometimes hours! Even worse, if you plug the drive into Windows, the OS will detect that it's corrupted and "helpfully" attempt to repair it—without asking you first—and often delete files in the process. Oh, but Windows won't tell you that it deleted any files, much less which files, and so later on when you update your backup... 💥

Suffice to say, I don't use exFAT anymore. Maybe it's just me—I don't understand why people aren't screaming from the rooftops about how exFAT destroyed all their data—but I've been bitten many times. I will admit that exFAT seems to be more stable on small flash drives versus larger hard drives, but at the end of the day I feel much safer with UDF.
 
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I have tried exFAT before but personally, I will not be re-formatting all my external drives just so I can use them on my PPC machines. NTFS is standard, I would prefer to focus on that, it would add a little more value to these old Macs in my opinion.
 
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I only bother with exFAT on USB flash drives that I don’t plan to use on PPC Macs. Except in my Mac Pro, I have one hard disk formatted exFAT as a share disk for Windows and Mac OS. It is noticeably slower than using HFS, APFS, or NTFS respectively on both operating systems. It is however faster than NTFS on Mac OS.
 
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I remember having installed an NTFS-driver & macFuse some time ago. Can't remember the source and have to check it about functionality.
Currently this seems to be the source for the latest Tuxera NTFS-G3 10.12 for PPC: http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com
Don't know, if it's free, but there's also a personal license at Tuxera for 15$/3Macs. That's not too bad.
Most of my external drives are on HFS+ and I'm happy, that MojavePatch did stay with HFS+ on my early-2008 17" MBP to keep downward-compatibility with my PPC.
I have a Win2k-VM (Fusion) on all of my intel-Macs and also on the PPC-Macs (with VirtualPC7) so I could access NTFS-drives by mounting them within Win2k-VM.
Otherwise I use FAT but didn't ever use exFAT. (maybe the "ex" has no potential to attract me ...)
 
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bobesch said:
Otherwise I use FAT but didn't ever use exFAT. (maybe the "ex" has no potential to attract me ...)
Click to expand...
exFAT is a vast improvement over the other FAT file systems. Especially on the Windows side of things. It works on XP SP3 and higher (and Windows “server” 2003 with an update too). It’s faster, more stable, and can store files over 4GB which is the biggest factor for me. Of course if you’re using a 2GB or smaller flash drive it is probably pointless. Most of us have much larger ones now unless we’re using a retro PC, like a Win 98 machine.
 
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Fair enough, point noted on exFAT. To stay true to the original topic - is anyone interested in bringing a recent-ish NTFS driver package to PPC? Source code is there waiting....
 
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I did a little research on this topic to see if I could spin something up, and there's a little roadblock that I ran in to:

The source above for NTFS-3G requires at least OSXFUSE 3.0. OSXFUSE-- the successor to the old macFUSE-- never had an official supported release for Tiger. So, we need to find an older version of NTFS-3G that also works with the old macFUSE.

Which led me to this page from the University of Wisconsin's Knowledgebase, which included a link to a precompiled package within the first block of text. I grabbed it, fired up my companion running 10.4.11, hit the installer and one restart later-- after waiting for the OS to finish initialising-- it worked. First try. Plugged in one of my flash drives that I knew was formatted as NTFS and I was able to put a file on it.

It is an older version from the source posted in the OP, but it works, and that's what matters.
 
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Thanks for having a look. Yeah, that's the same 2010 version I found floating around. I guess it works, I was just looking at the development since 2010 and thinking it would be nice to have the latest version... but I guess you gotta piss with the cock you got sometimes.
 
In theory, early versions of OSXFUSE should work with Leopard (but not Tiger), which would reopen the door for later NTFS-3G releases.
 
Project Alice said:
exFAT is a vast improvement over the other FAT file systems. Especially on the Windows side of things. It works on XP SP3 and higher (and Windows “server” 2003 with an update too). It’s faster, more stable, and can store files over 4GB which is the biggest factor for me. Of course if you’re using a 2GB or smaller flash drive it is probably pointless. Most of us have much larger ones now unless we’re using a retro PC, like a Win 98 machine.
Click to expand...
Ha, thanks! - I my case it's more like "you can't teach new tricks to an old dog", so I didn't take any effort in understanding the benefits and limitations of exFAT.
My external drives are either formatted as HFS+ or HTFS, so FAT and the 4GB hasn't been a problem so far.
Nice to read someone is still happy on XP and Server2003. I'm currently pretty upset that my bread&butter business-software kicked me off my handsome Win7/Server200 combination and that I lost 7 terminal-client-licences for RDP sessions in favorite of a simple Win10pro-FileServer.
 
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bobesch said:
Ha, thanks! - I my case it's more like "you can't teach new tricks to an old dog", so I didn't take any effort in understanding the benefits and limitations of exFAT.
My external drives are either formatted as HFS+ or HTFS, so FAT and the 4GB hasn't been a problem so far.
Nice to read someone is still happy on XP and Server2003. I'm currently pretty upset that my bread&butter business-software kicked me off my handsome Win7/Server200 combination and that I lost 7 terminal-client-licences for RDP sessions in favorite of a simple Win10pro-FileServer.
Click to expand...
Yes I used 2003 quite a bit over the years, I like it better than XP. I liked 7 a lot too. Unfortunately my place of employment also upgraded most of the PCs that were still running 7 to 10. I can’t stand that operating system. And people at work are always coming to me to help them fix stupid problems. Since the 10 upgrade there’s been more issues than not lol.
 
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OT: for Windows 10, I still hate it, but have grown to tolerate it over the years. There is a de-crapifier script out there that strips out the privacy invasion modules and bloatware. The worst part is still how buggy it is. Seems like software and apps are buggier today than they ever were in the past, and most people are complacent.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
With increased complexity comes an increased likelihood of bugs...


...or have decided not to get worked up about it. Because "that's just the way it is". :(
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I agree but here is my observation, maybe I am just being 'glass half empty'
Seems like software is being updated per a schedule, compared to when the development has matured enough to warrant publishing. Easy one is Apple iOS/macOS but the quality control is tight and well managed compared to many others, so that's not a good example.

Open the App Store on your device and see what apps are ready to be updated. A lot right? Some get updated several times a week. Now look at the release notes / descriptions on these updates. A lot of them say bug fixes, right?

To sum up my negative attitude I am sensing that software quality has taken a backseat to production schedule and etc. Half of this software needs more time to mature and have the bugs sorted out. But it's published anyway. Do I even need to talk about Windows 10 updates? It's like beating a dead horse on how broken it can be sometimes, rendering a PC unusable until they are rolled back due to non-quality.
 
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feelingsupersonic said:
OT: for Windows 10, I still hate it, but have grown to tolerate it over the years. There is a de-crapifier script out there that strips out the privacy invasion modules and bloatware. The worst part is still how buggy it is. Seems like software and apps are buggier today than they ever were in the past, and most people are complacent.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's well said: "grown to tolerate it".
Settings are quite a maze of a nightmare. Arrgh ...
Look&feel needs some learning, but that's ok.
I don't now anything about the security problems beneath the hood, but I hope, that's not too bad compared to the previous versions of Windows ...

To be honest, I wish, look&feel would be like Win2K.
After all t's just an operating system, the first layer, that is to provide an environment for applications to work smoothly. It shouldn't come into your mind at all, while working ...
 
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