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For years the logs of my Ubuntu systems sharing drives with a Windows installation have been routinely flooding logs with:

Mar 17 11:00:50 kemosabi ntfs-3g[483]: ntfs_attr_pread error reading '/pub/TL-WN722N_100629.zip' at offset 23138304: 4096 <> -1: Value too large for defined data type 

Mar 17 11:00:50 kemosabi ntfs-3g[483]: Failed to decompress file: Value too large for defined data type

Not to mention, the inconvenience of not being able to access so many files in the Windows-formatted partitions (esp. the shared doc & media storages for all OSes, which constitute the majority of the hard drive space, naturally).

The root cause of this is known: a shortcoming in ntfs-3g for its inability to deal with (Windows 8?) NTFS compressed files. (Poorly implemented spec: lacking a marker to end meaningful file data, after which garbage follows, which ntfs-3g attempts to decompress, not knowing any better.)

In 2013 a patch has been offered, but it never went into the mainstream ntfs driver release:

http://tuxera.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=30142

compress-lastblock-v2.patch.gz [736 Bytes]

Question:

How, specifically, can this fix be deployed into Ubuntu 14.04?

Can a module be built that can be seamlessly loaded into up-to-date Canonical .deb kernels?

Can that be delivered as a PPA repo?

Marcos
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  • Not to mention, that /var/log/syslog files form with errors like above piling up hundreds of lines per second, quickly consuming gigabytes and bringing the Linux side of the server to a screeching halt. Originating processes may be hard to track, but typically I'd suspect mlocate, clamd, smbd,...can't blame them for scanning dir structures though. – Marcos Mar 18 '15 at 08:01
  • related: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ntfs-3g/+question/253597 – Marcos Mar 18 '15 at 08:36
  • Filed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ntfs-3g/+bug/1295030 – Marcos Mar 18 '15 at 09:17

1 Answers1

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The latest ntfs-3g driver can be found here in tarball format and can be compiled and run on Ubuntu using this Q&A.

As you didn't mention your Ubuntu version, and there are no PPAs that currently support 2014.2.15AR.3. you have two possibilities:

  1. it is the standard package in the 15.04 experimental version, (not recommended for production as this is not a stable version)
  2. wait for the 16.04 LTS version
Community
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Fabby
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  • Don't thank me! ;-) If you like my answer, just click the little grey ☑ under the "0" now turning it into beautiful green. If you do not like my answer, click on the little grey down-arrow below the 0, and if you really like my answer, click on the little grey checkmark and the little up-arrow... If you have any further questions, go to http://askubuntu.com/questions/ask – Fabby Mar 24 '15 at 13:43
  • "How, specifically, can this fix be deployed into Ubuntu 14.04?". 2. Yes, awaiting 15.04 release in April.... however for some workstations & servers there is no possibility of such an upgrade anytime soon. 3. Thanks for responding, but no mucking around with build-essentials allowed in most situations. Hence no source tarballs, etc.
    • – Marcos Mar 24 '15 at 14:04
  • Answer updated. – Fabby Mar 24 '15 at 14:07