Hi Ted.
>>> I wouldn't even do that much. Take the code out of the kernel
>>> entirely, and then provide a user-mode utility that goes through
>>> the filesystem, and converts the files compressed with a
>>> depcreated algorithm to either being uncompressed or compressed
>>> with a better format. The goal here is to keep the kernel as
>>> long-term maintainable as possible.
>> Can this be done in user space? ... e2fsck does things at that
>> level! It's just playing on the raw device.
> Of course it can be done in user space! It will require
> unmounting the filesystem, but that's about it.
> Basically, you just interate over each of the inodes, and then
> convert each inode one at a time. Look at e2fsck/swapfs.c for
> an example for what the overall structure should look like ---
> this byte swaps an entire filesystem by iterating over each
> inode. (This was used to convert over very old 68k filesystems
> to the standard ext2 format.)
> It's not hard, but it does require someone who understands the
> 0.3 and 0.4 e2compr to write the appropriate conversion code.
> I'm willing to help someone who needs help using the ext2
> library to do this, but fundamentally it's not terribly
> difficult.
You may wish to take this up with Peter. As I've made very clear right
from the start, I only have access to the 0.4 version of e2comp, so
will NOT be doing anything concerned with the 0.3 version. If somebody
wishes to write a tool to convert between the two, there's no point in
asking me as I've no information with which to help them.
Best wishes from Riley.
* Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
* All rights and wrongs reserved.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
* http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/
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