Is there a partitioning toll and file system tool in cygwin?

Is there a partitioning toll and file system tool in cygwin?

[Peder Sverdrup]

Hi,
I run cygwin on Win10 64-bit. I would like to format an external harddrive with ext3. (And then do a backup of my windows file with my rsync script to the external harddrive.)
Problem I have is that I do not find any partitioning or file system tool in cygwin. For instance - I can not find fdisk. Ant not parted.
Can anybody help?


I have also tried to compile fdisk from source - is there a tutorial as to how to compile from source?

Kind regards from a newbie, Peder

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

Re: Is there a partitioning toll and file system tool in cygwin?

[Marco Atzeri]

On 12/05/2016 16:16, Peder Sverdrup wrote:
> Hi,
> I run cygwin on Win10 64-bit. I would like to format an external harddrive with ext3. (And then do a backup of my windows file with my rsync script to the external harddrive.)
> Problem I have is that I do not find any partitioning or file system tool in cygwin. For instance - I can not find fdisk. Ant not parted.
> Can anybody help?
>
>
> I have also tried to compile fdisk from source - is there a tutorial as to how to compile from source?
>
> Kind regards from a newbie, Peder
>


$ cygcheck -p fdisk.exe |grep -v debuginfo
Found 4 matches for fdisk.exe
util-linux-2.25.2-1 - util-linux: Collection of basic system utilities 
(installed binaries and support files)
util-linux-2.25.2-2 - util-linux: Collection of basic system utilities 
(installed binaries and support files)

$ cygcheck -p ext3 |grep -v debuginfo
Found 20 matches for ext3
....
e2fsprogs-1.42.12-1 - e2fsprogs: Ext2/3/4 filesystem utilities 
(installed binaries and support files)
e2fsprogs-1.42.12-2 - e2fsprogs: Ext2/3/4 filesystem utilities 
(installed binaries and support files)
libext2fs-devel-1.42.12-1 - libext2fs-devel: Ext2fs library 
(development) (installed binaries and support files)
libext2fs-devel-1.42.12-2 - libext2fs-devel: Ext2fs library 
(development) (installed binaries and support files)
...


so you need to install the package util-linux and e2fsprogs.



--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

Re: Is there a partitioning toll and file system tool in cygwin?

[Warren Young]

On May 12, 2016, at 8:16 AM, Peder Sverdrup <psverdrup@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I would like to format an external harddrive with ext3.

Marco’s answer will get you that far.  However…

> (And then do a backup of my windows file with my rsync script to the external harddrive.)

…the e2fsprogs package isn’t going to get you a Windows kernel driver for ext3 filesystems, so you aren’t going to be able to mount the formatted filesystem under Windows.  All you can do with e2fsprogs is write a fresh filesystem onto a block device and then run things like tune2fs to modify it in place.

Cygwin generally leaves low-level filesystem issues up to the OS.  The only filesystems Cygwin actually provides are virtual ones like /dev and /proc.

I think you should be looking at something like Paragon ExtFS for Windows instead:

  https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-windows/

There are alternatives, but I cannot recommend any from personal experience.  I haven’t used Paragon’s Windows products, either, but I have used their NTFS for OS X product, and never had any problems with it.

You might also consider going the other way: use NTFS on that backup drive to make Windows (and thus Cygwin) happy, then use fuse-ntfs3g on the Linux side to mount the drive.

Either way you go, you’re going to run into semantic mismatches, such as permission mapping problems.  That’s unavoidable.

> For instance - I can not find fdisk.

I don’t know about other extfs drivers for Windows, but Paragon’s includes a disk partitioning and formatting tool.
--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple

Re: Is there a partitioning toll and file system tool in cygwin?

[Erik Soderquist]

On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 10:59 AM, Warren Young wrote:
> > (And then do a backup of my windows file with my rsync script to the external harddrive.)
>
> …the e2fsprogs package isn’t going to get you a Windows kernel driver for ext3 filesystems, so you aren’t going to be able to mount the formatted filesystem under Windows.  All you can do with e2fsprogs is write a fresh filesystem onto a block device and then run things like tune2fs to modify it in place.
>
> Cygwin generally leaves low-level filesystem issues up to the OS.  The only filesystems Cygwin actually provides are virtual ones like /dev and /proc.
>
> I think you should be looking at something like Paragon ExtFS for Windows instead:
>
>   https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-windows/

Personally, I use https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/ and have
had good results

-- Erik

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple