CyanoHao / NTFS-as-rootfs

Install Linux to an NTFS partition.

NTFS as rootfs

Install Linux to an NTFS partition.

This guide focus on partition installtion. For directory installation, Nikola Pavlica’s guide may help.

How NTFS is different from native file systems

FUSE

• Initramfs is required.
• Initramfs helpers does not handle NTFS properly.

Permissions

• NTFS-3G can map NTFS permissions to POSIX permissions, if the permissions option is (explicitly or implicitly) set on mount.
• Some builds of NTFS-3G may enable nosuid by default, and mount does not pass suid option to ntfs-3g.

Known issue

• Poor performance.
• On shutdown or reboot, the system will halt but not poweroff or reset.

Arch Linux and Manjaro

Installation

Arch Linux: follow the ArchWiki Installation guide page. Note that the permissions option is required when mounting the root partition.

Manjaro: do customised installation like Arch Linux.

• The manjaro-architect installer may help.
  • The “architect” iso is not required. You can run it from live media.
• If manjaro-architect used, mount the root partition with permissions to /mnt manually.

ntfs-3g package

Arch Linux and Manjaro’s build of NTFS-3G enable nosuid by default. The ntfs-3g-fuse package works.

Initramfs

Edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

• add fuse to the MODULES array;
• add mount.ntfs-3g to the BINARIES array.

Then regenerate initramfs.

Kernel command line parameters

• Add rootfstype=ntfs-3g and rootflags=permissions to kernel command line parameters.
• Make sure all required mount options have been add to kernel parameters, and remove root partition from /etc/fstab to avoid systemd’s auto remount, which is not supported by NTFS-3G.

Debian and derivatives

WIP.