booting on an NTFS partition

[moonlightcheese]

no, livecd is not an option.
another partition type is not an option.

i absolutely must have linux boot from an NTFS partition. can it be done?

[bigtomrodney]

There are some distros which run from an image file on your NTFS drive. Why wouldn't you be able to partition or use a live solution like booting from USB? With that option you could have a persistant home directory anyway.

There are some distros as I mentioned that can - Cooperative Linux was one but I think it is defunct. You may be able to find a distro to do this on Distrowatch. NTFS writing hasn't traditionally been very good on Linux and the current solution ntfs-3g is not running at kernel level so would probably be unsuitable for booting purposes.

[moonlightcheese]

There are some distros which run from an image file on your NTFS drive. Why wouldn't you be able to partition or use a live solution like booting from USB? With that option you could have a persistant home directory anyway.

There are some distros as I mentioned that can - Cooperative Linux was one but I think it is defunct. You may be able to find a distro to do this on Distrowatch. NTFS writing hasn't traditionally been very good on Linux and the current solution ntfs-3g is not running at kernel level so would probably be unsuitable for booting purposes.

wow... a response! that's a first since i started this project... no one seems to have the answers i need. thanks

i'm trying to build an install that will completely format a system from within windows. the windows .msi i can build no problem. it's what to put in the .msi that's the problem. i was thinking to accomplish this by editing the boot.ini to point to a custom bootsect that loads lilo and then the OS to run a format script that runs several patterns over the drive and finally erases the data.

so why isn't the livecd/USB install an option? the purpose of this tool is to format drives remotely on a large scale using enterprise software or something similar (like SMS or BigFix).

i know NTFS partitions have limited support in linux for writing, but it doesn't much matter as the drive can be mounted read-only for the boot process, unmounted and then formatted... right? it sounds right... ^_^

an image-based install should work very well. are there any you would recommend that are relatively small and boot quickly? since the only purpose is to erase the drive directly after installation i'm looking for something light, fast and boots very quickly to a bash shell for the script.

EDIT: actually, the image-based install wouldn't work as the image would reside on the NTFS partition that needs to be erased.

i have already built the boot process (although lilo may prove to be prblematic with it's static drive geometry settings) and can load linux from a windows boot loader, and tried to load linux from NTFS with no success, most likely because NTFS support isn't kernel level. are there any that have kernel level NTFS support? can i add it manually to a small distro with an insmod or something? (note: i'm an intermediate linux user with little experience with kernel modules and drivers).

[bigtomrodney]

I usually use Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe machines. It is Linux based and does a great job. Since you plan or formatting the drive and booting from the network would you consider looking at something like PXE boot? DBAN is only floppy disk sized anyway so it shouldn't take long over the network.

[moonlightcheese]

I usually use Darik's Boot and Nuke to wipe machines. It is Linux based and does a great job. Since you plan or formatting the drive and booting from the network would you consider looking at something like PXE boot? DBAN is only floppy disk sized anyway so it shouldn't take long over the network.

i tried using dban already and tried to boot it with the above method (loading lilo with the windows bootloader and then starting dban linux kernel with lilo) and got kernel errors because it was loading from an unsupported FS type. dban requires that it be run from FAT type partitions. now you see my dilema... T_T

is it possible to recompile the dban distro's kernel to include some system-level NTFS support? that would completely fix the issue.

EDIT: well... i'll still have other issues with the package after this... but that's another thread entirely

oh, and PXE is not an option as most of the systems have network booting turned off in the BIOS and those BIOS settings are not changeable with enterprise tools. it has to be run from NTFS. trust me, i'm as annoyed with this as you are... >.< having no options sucks.

[moonlightcheese]

hmmm... well how about this... i'll make simple small questions and maybe i'll get more responses?

does the kernel load in read-only mode? i think it does...

if so... how do i compile in support for ntfs and have it load with the kernel so it can bootstrap from an ntfs partition?