Mac OS X Ext2 Filesystem / News: Recent posts

1.4d3 includes write support and bug fixes. Find it in the Files section.

A lot of work went into this release (the dir lookup offset caching was a
particular pain in the ass), so please consider a Donation (see the Readme).

1.4d1 is now available from the Files section (ext2fsx_dev package). Read only support (for now) and be prepared for kernel panics and/or system hangs.

I've been spending quite a few weekends working on this, so any appreciation is welcome:

Wishlist - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/registry/1UV8OJ9VKS9VV/

So, I've started getting back to bringing up the driver on Tiger. Progress is going well, everything is compiling (but not necessarily running) except for the vnops file. I still have to implement locking and then testing before a release can happen.

If you want to offer encouragement, my Amazon wishlist needs some pruning: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/registry/1UV8OJ9VKS9VV/

I've had a request to post something about Tiger support -- so here it is:

Apple completely changed the kernel interfaces in Tiger and as such, a lot of work needs to be done to get the Ext2 driver running on Tiger. I started some of this work last year after WWDC, but there is still a lot to do and I don't have the time to finish things up right now.

I do plan on getting back to this at some point (hopefully before the end of the year -- but no guarantees). In the meantime if anyone wants to help out, check out TOT from CVS and have at it. Patches can be submitted via the patch tracker.

See the file change log for changes.

Important!!
There is a known bug (#826406) with copying a large no. of files. The machine will lockup (the mouse still works, but nothing else). This is not a panic, but still has the same effect. If you must copy a large # of files (several hundred seems to be the kick off point), then it would be best to do the copy in smaller chunks.

First non-debug build.

The -2122 file copy bug is not fixed.

This release fixes major file system corruption and panic bugs. Users of previous versions should immediately upgrade.

Fixes a kernel panic. Previous users should upgrade ASAP.

First alpha release. There will be no new features added between now and final.

Added write support. This seems to work fairly well, but no guarantees that your FS won't be corrupted.

The e2fsprogs userland utils are now included; including fsck, mke2fs, dumpe2fs, etc.

Fixed d2 read problems. The indirect block addresses were not being byte swapped.
Fixed 30 second mount delay problem. This was due to some errant debug code.
extfs.util now responds to -k to return the volume's UUID.

I found out why d2 is failing to read some files. Any file that contains indirect blocks is failing. Don't why it's failing (probably some byte swap thing).

This means that only small files will be readable. On a 4KB block system (Ext2 default) this would be 48KB and below.

d2 is now available. If you had downloaded d1, I'm sorry. That version should have never been released. In d2, volume mounting, and file listings work. Reading files also works most of the time.

Warning!!!!

This code has not been tested on an actual EXT2 filesystem. The main developer does not have access to an EXT2 formatted disk. If anyone wants to provide an EXT2 formatted CD-ROM please send an e-mail to <bbergstrand@users.sourceforge.net>.

The KEXT is now loading into the kernel. You can't actually mount volumes yet, since the user land tools are still missing. So my next goal is to get some minimal userland support.

The KEXT is now compiling. It's still missing the necessary code to actually load into the kernel properly, but it does compile (albeit with a few warnings).

CVS has been updated with all the changes to get to first compile. It's almost there; ext2_vnops.c is the only file still broken.