NTFS-3g and colon character

I’m always having issues moving files created in linux with ntfs-3g to windows when there is a colon character in the filename. Windows will display the name, but wont’ open it. Is this a persistent bug, or is there a way to issue an “illegal character” response to software whenever it attempts to name a file with an “illegal” colon on an NTFS filesystem? I can’t find any discussions on google.

Thank You!
Patti :slight_smile:

I am seeing that there is a fstab mount option for ntfs-3g file system called "windows_names" which I found here: NTFS-3G Manual | Tuxera

Besides this fix, the obvious thing to do is to not use the colon character in your file names. It is also possible to write a bash script, using the tr command to change a colon discovered into something else. I have done this before to get rid of spaces in filenames for instance.

Thank You,

When I tried to do that, I got an error message from “cp”. I think I was running 12.2 at the time.

My present method of solving that problem: I have a directory on a linux box that I share with both “NFS” and “samba”. If I put the file there, and then copy from Windows, the “samba” file name mangling seems to take care of the problem. I haven’t tested this very thoroughly.

Thanks for the replies, I’m surprised it’s still an unresolved issue, is all. Too, I thought maybe there was some obvious fix that people might be using…
I’ll try to get smarter on ways to avoid these problems.