News › linux
By The Linux Camp News, October 27, 2026
Merged for the 7.4-rc1 development cycle, the NTFS update adds named-stream management interfaces and optional file:stream paths. Path-based access exposes streams through regular file descriptors.
Linux’s modern NTFS driver has gained Alternate Data Streams access in the update for Linux 7.4-rc1, with the upstream merge confirmed on October 26, 2026. Namjae Jeon’s update adds both explicit stream-management interfaces and optional pathname access. This is a development-cycle merge, not an announcement that stable Linux 7.4 or distribution packages are available. 3 2
Alternate Data Streams, or ADS, let NTFS associate more than one data stream with a file. The update exposes that existing storage model to Linux applications rather than introducing a new on-disk concept. Phoronix describes the streams as multiple $DATA attributes. The new ioctls, application requests handled by the driver, provide operations to enumerate, read, write and remove named streams on files and directories. 1 2
The pathname interface matters because it exposes individual streams as regular file descriptors. According to the maintainer, those descriptors support mmap, locking, truncation and allocation. The practical benefit is that an application can address a particular stream and use these familiar operations on it, while the ioctls provide explicit stream-management operations. That is a driver capability, not evidence that existing copy or backup tools automatically discover and preserve every stream. 2
For a workflow that needs file:stream paths, check that the updated driver is being used and that the mount has streams_interface=windows enabled. The pathname interface is opt-in, so ADS support should not be read as making colon-based stream paths available on every NTFS mount. This mount setting is distinct from the newly added ioctl interface. 2
The October 27 source snapshot leaves a remount limitation unresolved. The maintainer says the driver compares streams_interface with the mounted volume’s setting during remount, but the supplied summary does not explain whether or how that setting can be changed on an existing mount. It also mentions named-stream documentation and UAPI work without supplying the interface definitions, so ioctl identifiers, permission rules and naming restrictions still need verification before application integration. 2