1 ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor, version e2fsprogs 2 3 4 This version of ext2ed has been modified and updated by Theodore Ts'o 5 for inclusion with the e2fsprogs package. It now builds with modern 6 ncurses and I've fixed various small bugs, particular in the redrawing 7 and resizing functions. 8 9 It is currently not built by default -- the top-level e2fsprogs 10 Makefile doesn't recurse into this directory. This is because ext2ed 11 has a number of VERY SERIOUS shortcomings: 12 13 1) It doesn't work on filesystems bigger than 2GB 14 15 2) It assumes that all's the world an Intel, and assumes that 16 everything is in Intel (little-endian) byte order. 17 18 Fixing either of these problems would be non-trivial, and so I at this 19 point DO NOT RECOMMEND that distributions try to include this program, 20 even as modified and updated in e2fsprogs. This especially goes for 21 Debian, where the Debian maintainer for e2fsprogs has a history of 22 making authorized changes to e2fsprogs to include programs that aren't 23 supported, and then starts bugging me with bug reports. YES I KNOW. 24 THIS PROGRAM HAS HORRIBLE SHORTCOMINGS. IT IS INCLUDED HERE ONLY 25 BECAUSE IT'S A CONVENIENT WAY FOR (FOR E2FSPROGS DEVELOPERS ON INTEL 26 MACHINES) TO GENERATE TEST CASES BY SELECTIVELY CORRUPTING 27 FILESYSTEMS. I WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS PROGRAM FOR USE BY GENERAL USERS 28 SO PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE IT IN A DISTRIBUTION. 29 30 I have currently disabled the use of GNU Readline in this program, 31 because readline and ncurses really don't play well together at all. 32 Readline assumes that it can write arbitrary text to the screen 33 (especially when it tries to print out a completion list), which just 34 doesn't work with ncurses. Fixing this so they would work together 35 would require wholesale changes to readline. 36 37 Theodore Ts'o 38 tytso (a] MIT.EDU 39 May 12, 2001 40 41 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 43 ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor, version 0.2 44 ------------------------------------------------------ 45 46 This is version 0.2 of ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor. 47 48 Modifications on Apr 5 2001 49 This is minor bug fixes to ext2ed, as of April 2001. 50 It supports modern ext2 version that has file type in directory structure 51 and fixes the missunderstanding between ncurses and 52 readline. 53 54 I first applied patches from Redhat except the one for readline that 55 rewrote a readline behavior. 56 57 Globals diffs between version 0.1 and 0.2 is stored in file : 58 diff-ext2ed.1.2 59 60 Christian Bac <Christian.Bac (a] nt-evry.fr> 61 62 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63 64 Documentation 65 ------------- 66 67 ext2ed's documentation consists of three documents: 68 69 1. The user's guide. 70 2. Technical overview of the ext2 filesystem. 71 3. The EXT2ED design and implementation document. 72 73 Those documents are available in the doc directory, in linuxdoc-sgml and 74 postscript formats. 75 76 The documentation is also available online at: 77 78 http://tochnapc2.technion.ac.il 79 80 under the ext2ed section. 81 82 Installation 83 ------------ 84 85 ext2ed requires the kernel sources and the readline and ncurses packages. 86 Please edit the makefile if you are using an "old" version of ncurses (See the 87 details below) or if gcc can't find the various header files and libraries. 88 89 To install, simply issue a 'make' command to compile and a 'make install' 90 command to install. I have also included an already compiled linux a.out 91 binary. 92 93 ext2ed and ncurses 94 ------------------ 95 96 ext2ed uses the ncurses library for terminal output. It is very important 97 that ncurses will be properly installed on your system: 98 99 1. Old versions of ncurses (around 1.8.5) need the OLD_NCURSES compile 100 time option in EXT2ED. 101 102 At least from 1.9.2c, this flag should not be used. I would recommend 103 upgrading the ncurses library to the newer versions. 104 105 2. ncurses uses its own terminfo database rather then the termcap file. 106 It is important that the terminfo database will be found by ncurses. 107 If this is not the case, you will see on startup some lines which 108 refer to /etc/termcap. This will mean that there is a problem with 109 the terminfo database. 110 111 3. Newer versions of ncurses (and the 1.3 series of the kernel) describe 112 the linux console in the entry 'linux' and not 'console', as it was 113 before. If you run ext2ed in the linux console, you should either 114 set your TERM environment variable to 'linux' or link 115 l/linux to c/console in the terminfo database. 116 117 4. The percompiled binary was linked with ncurses 1.9.4 and will search 118 for the terminfo database on /usr/local/lib/terminfo. If you are 119 using it, and your 1.9.4 compatible terminfo database is not on the 120 directory above, use the TERMINFO environment variable to specify 121 an alternate location. 122 123 Running ext2ed 124 -------------- 125 126 For those of you who don't like reading lengthy articles, here are a few 127 basic guidelines: 128 129 1. Don't use ext2ed to change a mounted filesystem ! 130 131 Using ext2ed in read-only mode on a mounted filesystem can be allowed 132 by using the configuration file option 'AllowMountedRead on'. However, 133 note that the displayed data will be unreliable. 134 135 2. ext2ed currently can't handle filesystems bigger than 2 GB. I am 136 sorry for the inconvenience. This will hopefully be fixed in future 137 releases. 138 139 3. Before running ext2ed, edit the configuration file 140 /var/lib/ext2ed/ext2ed.conf to suit your needs. The various 141 configuration options are documented there. 142 143 4. Use the 'setdevice' command to open an ext2 filesystem. 144 e.g. 'setdevice /dev/hda1'. 145 146 5. If the filesystem is an ext2 filesystem and ext2ed fails to 147 autodetect this, use the 'ForceExt2 on' configuration file option. 148 149 6. The filesystem will always be opened in read-only mode. Feel free to 150 experiment, but take care with the 'enablewrite' command. 151 152 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 153 154 Feel free to send me feedback with anything regarding to ext2ed. 155 156 Enjoy, 157 158 Gadi Oxman <tgud (a] tochnapc2.technion.ac.il> 159 Haifa, August 23 1995 160 161
