Re: New HFS Patch 12.5 fix a dangerous bug

[K . G .]

> On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 04:44:58PM +0200, B.Hakvoort wrote:
> > Did this patch never made it in the official libparted source? And if
> > so, why not?
> 
> My main concern is stability.  Unfortunately, it is hard to test the
> HFS code because there is no HFS support in Linux.

There _is_ HFS support in Linux (though limited).
You have :
1) hfsutils and hfsplusutils for access in userspace
2) The kernel implementation (very buggy in 2.4 but quite good in 2.6)
3) A port of newfs_hfs I've corrected (an endianess issue was remaining in
wrapped HFS+) and quickly hack for Linux 2.4 support (userspace can't access
end of partitions)
( http://xilun.nerim.net/Projet/Parted/Newfs_hfs/newfs_hfs_4_linux-2.tar.gz )

My own main concern was stability during the past year, but is more 
performance now... I've been testing the futur patch 13 during two weeks
(and I'm still testing it right now) and could discover some remaining bugs.
Of course it would be better if some other people do read the HFS
specifications and my code...

My main concern is now speed : it took about 5 hours to resize 10->5 Go
with hundred thousand of fragmented files, which is slow :p
I know what I've have to do to make things go faster, and I'll start to work
on that in next versions.

Of course I'll also try to write working automatic regression tests for HFS
in next versions. But I must switch to a 2.6 kernel because of HFS bugs in 2.4
and I still haven't done it for other reasons.
But to be efficient I must find a reliable way to generate fragmentation in
the catalog and extent overflow files. Also there is a part of my code that
has never been tested (attributes file) because I could never find a FS using
that feature (which in anyway not completly defined in Apple specs, and I doubt
there is one computer in the world with that feature anyway).

> I've been thinking perhaps the best solution is to port Parted to OSX.
> I doubt it would be very hard.  (How naive I am!)  I might even have
> a crack at it on my brother's iBook.

I'll try to take a look at how difficult it would be soon.

> Speaking of testing, I think we could probably do a lot better than
> Parted's current regression tests.  e2fsprogs has much better tests.
> Any volunteers?

What new tests are you thinking of ?

> Cheers,
> Andrew

Cheers,
Guillaume Knispel