Mount points for NTFS hard disks hidden after recent system update

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I have two NTFS hard disk partitions (one on the laptop internal HD - always present, one on an external HD via eSATA - sometimes plugged in, sometimes not). These are mounted in /etc/fstab:


UUID=0123456789ABCDEF /home/blabla/DatenWin ntfs-3g nofail,noatime,user,users,uid=myself,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0
UUID=0123456789ABCDEF /home/blabla/XCs ntfs-3g nofail,noatime,user,users,uid=myself,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 0 0

For comparison, this is how an ext4 partition gets mounted:

UUID=0123456789ABCDEF /home/blabla/Daten ext4 noatime,acl,discard 1 2

This setup used to work fine since long. Both directories under /home/myself, i.e. the DatenWin and XCs directories, were visible, they did present their respective disk contents, and the fstab settings provide me with the required rights.

After a recent update of Tumbleweed to 20180427, however, things went bad. The two directory entries DatenWin and XCs for the NTFS partitions appear as hidden now in Dolphin and Krusader, although they have no dot as their first character. They can be made visible in the file managers (e.g., Alt+. in Dolphin), but that is a nuisance. I continue to be able to create files and directories underneath and access existing files properly, i.e. the rights are still okay as before.

When the external hard disk is not present, its respective mount point - the DatenWin directory - reverts back to its old self, i.e. it is visible as is normal and it has the correct rights.

Mount points for ext4 partitions continue normally as before.

Any ideas? Is this behavior with mount points for NTFS partitions intended now? How can I get back to the long-time way of simply showing such mount points?

PS: My other Linux system, Manjaro (on 4.16 kernel as well) keeps acting normal with visible mount point directories.

#2

As far as I understand you, the mount points are “seen” as “hidden” in GUI file managers (when the file system is mounted).

What about a simple ls of the directory above? Does a basic tool as ls not show (“hide”) them or is it only an interpretation of some GUI programs?

ls -l /home/blabla

BTW there is a contradiction between the user you make owner of the mounted NTFS files (myself) and the name of the home directory (/home/blabla). It is of course possible to give user myself a home directory named /home/blabla, but it is not normally done. Or user blabla will have files inside his home directory that are owned by user myself, which is also not a situation one should prefer IMHO.

#3

Thank you for giving quick feedback. Let me answer your points in turn.

SORRY, my fault. I intended to hide my username by replacing “myself” with “blabla”, but I was sloppy. Of course, it’s “myself” everywhere.

Thank you, these are correct directions.

  • A simple “ls -l” reveals that everything is fine, the directories for the two NTFS mount points show up correctly.
  • It is only Dolphin that screws things up and thinks the two directories in question are hidden.
  • Krusader keeps showing them correctly. I am very sorry for incorrectly stating that also Krusader became ill-behaved. (I just overlooked them in a different file ordering.)

Thus, the current conclusion is: Dolphin has caught a bug during the last update(s?) of Tumbleweed.

What to do next? Would the openSUSE Bugzilla be the right place to report it?

#4

I think yes. When it is different from earlier, that is a bug (I hope they do not see it as a feature though ;)).

And about the BTW.

When you post something between CODE tags, we assume that it is the unabridged, unchanged copy/paste from the terminal emulator window. We depend on it to see what you did and saw. Often the story that comes with it is full of conclusions (not always correct conclusions) and assumptions (again often wrong ones). But the computer delivers the real facts.

When you think you want to change something in such a copy/paste (like a password, never thought a user name would be seen as an important secret) then you should explain that very clearly.

So please avoid confusion in the future.

#5

How do you perform your Tw upgrades? If not through ‘zypper dup’ , then use that first.

#6

@Henk van Velden: Sorry again, I will of course adhere to the “BTW” remarks.

@Knurpht: Updates are done in the - AFAIK only - recommended way in Tumbleweed:

sudo zypper ref
sudo zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change

followed by an optional

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

I will take the time tomorrow and post a Bugzilla bug report wrt Dolphin.

#7

That is correct then. But the --no-allow-vendor-change is default for Tumbleweed since some time, thus one may leave it out.

#8

I reported the issue to TW bugzilla. Indeed this is an ongoing development upstream at KDE versus an ntfs-3g bug/feature which not only affects Dolphin, but also the file dialogs. There seems to be no unanimous opinion yet on how to handle this at KDE.

Let‘s hope they won‘t make NTFS handling unusable! :wink: >:(

#9

My openSUSE bug report was confirmed, reproduced and expanded upon by wolfi123. He then removed it since nothing can be done at openSUSE. Instead, he referred to the KDE bug report at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392913. That‘s the place where to complain in case KDE sticks to the current hiding of NTFS mount points…

#10

Erm, this hasn’t been done on purpose.

They just added support for hidden files on NTFS partitions.
Unfortunately it turned out that the root directory of an NTFS partition apparently always has the “hidden” attribute set…

I.e. it’s not a bug on the KDE side really, and the question now is how to best workaround the problem.

#11

Just installed Tumbleweed as main OS coming from Mint17.3 (KDE4).
Glad I saw this thread, was going bonkers, thought that there was something wrong in my fstab.
Was trying all kinds of different options in there.
But the ntfs partition was almost everywhere visible except in some file dialogs.
Glad it is known to the Devs.

#12

FYI, I submitted a patch to the openSUSE packages to revert that upstream change.
So this will be “fixed” in one of the next Tumbleweed snapshots (and Leap 15.0).

Of course, NTFS hidden files will no longer be hidden then, but they weren’t before either.

#13

Thank you, I’m glad and grateful you decided to go this route back for now. I suppose the same holds true for many more users of openSUSE Leap and TW KDE. :slight_smile:

#14

Actually I hoped (and still hope) to see a fix from upstream that I could add. :wink:

I merely decided to go this route today as to not ship Leap 15.0 with this problem…