NTFS Driver For Linux 6.5 Brings Small Optimizations & Fixes

Konstantin Komarov of Paragon Software has submitted the NTFS(3) file-system driver updates for the nearly-closed Linux 6.5 merge window.

This better NTFS file-system read-write driver was upstreamed back in 2021 for Linux 5.15 with the code donated by Paragon and a big improvement over the former read-focused NTFS kernel driver or that of the NTFS-3G FUSE driver. Since then there have been improvements on and off for bettering this driver.

With Linux 6.5 the NTFS3 driver now supports the volinfo and label attributes for NTFS volumes being exposed under sysfs. There is also an addition to use the alternative boot mode if the primary boot is corrupted and various small optimizations throughout the kernel driver code-base.

The NTFS3 driver has also seen some CPU endian fixes, various logic errors resolved, and working out some code refactoring improvements. Overall it's a decent size file-system driver update for Linux 6.5.

These improvements were merged on Friday ahead of the Linux 6.5-rc1 release expected on Sunday.