Re: Simple Question ...

[Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers <bugtraq () planetcobalt net>]

On 2004-01-05 Meidinger Chris wrote:
> To all the people who:
>
> > can't think of a reason to chose FAT over NTFS.  
>
> or who:  
>
> > usually recommend a separate FAT32 partition for data exchange
>
> For some (many!) of us that have windows and linux on the same system,
> and really do want to be able to access the same partition from both
> operating systems for whatever reasons, fat is the perfect choice.

I already said that in the sentence from which you took the latter quote
(though I don't agree on the "perfect choice").

> on my own workstation machines*, i don't really care about ACL's.
> obviously fat would be a terrible choice for a file server, but it's
> just fine for a single-user workstation.

I don't think so. I am using the setup I suggested on my notebook for
almost two years now, and I got along pretty well. Usually read-access
to the data is sufficient for me, so NTFS isn't a problem, even when
using Linux. On the rare occasions I have to transfer data from Linux to
Windows, I use the trasfer partition (1 GB).

> If i secured my own computer so poorly that NTFS ACL's are my last
> line of defense, then i don't think it really matters which NT users
> have access to what, my attacker is likely to be admin or local-system
> anyway.

They are another line of defense, so why avoid them if you can have
them? What's the point?

> Just a small point, because i was kind of annoyed by all the
> fat-bashing. 

Be annoyed of it all you like, it doesn't make it less deserved.

> keep it simple, and less can go wrong. 

NTFS is not *that* complicated, and avoiding an extra level of security
is not simple, it's stupid. What IYHO can go wrong with using NTFS?

> *i've got 3 workstations on my desk all doing different duty between 3
> different networks. each has a win/lin dual boot. now, i almost never
> boot into windows, but in the rare event that it would become
> necessary it would be a huge pain to: 1) discover i need a file from a
> linux partition 2) stop what i am doing and boot into linux 3) copy
> that file to the fat transfer-partition 4) reboot into windows 5) use
> the file 6) discover that i need one more file 7) return to step 1 ...

I don't know what Linux filesystem you are using on those workstations,
but for ext2/3 that's plain wrong. On the rare occasions I run into a
situation like that, I use explore2fs [1] to read files from Linux
partitions.

[1] http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm

Regards
Ansgar Wiechers

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