LK-ML & LND-ML,
I have produced a patch for the NTFS driver as described below which I have
sent to Alan Cox for inclusion in the next 2.4.0-acX kernel. Patch is
generated against -ac9. The patch is large due to a large K&R-ification of
the whole NTFS driver as well as error code conversion to being negative.
Due to the size the patch is not attached but can be found on the
linux-ntfs project (which I have taken the freedom to register) on
sourceforge in the anonymous ftp area as:
ftp://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/pub/linux-ntfs/patch-ntfs-010116-linux-2.4.0-ac9.bz2
*The patch doesn't touch any code outside the NTFS driver.*
*Patch is tested for compilation both as module and in kernel (both RO and
RW) and for functionality as module RW. - It compiles warning free on two
different systems and runs at least as well as the original. My testing of
write support didn't trash the partition I was writing to which is a big
improvement from before. [Admittedly I used my NtfsFix utility (not yet
publicly released but watch this space) before I rebooted into NT so this
will have helped.]*
Detailed description of patch:
- Fix a *critical* bug in on disk structure laying out which always
resulted in some certain attributes being corrupt!
- Convert all error codes to being negative and being returned negative to
the VFS. Including modifying all error handling to be consistently using
negative numbers. This was suggested by Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>.
- Fix some other bugs, not as critical but help to make the driver more
generally correct/stable (including on disk structures and in memory
layout, such as fixing handling the update sequence number (or fixup as
called in the driver), fixing searching for attributes which had some
wrong assumptions, fix for some of the unicode stuff including endianness
handling [There was a function half with and half without handling
endianness!, and some not doing handling at all], possibly other one liners
I can't remember).
- Added several FIXMEs where the fix was not obvious/small.
- Removed non-linux kernel related #ifdef-ed code as the new utilities I
have started on will have a separate code base from the kernel mode driver
(except for some structural header files perhaps which will be 1-to-1
copies of each other).
- Changed NTFS driver version number to 010116.
- Added new sourceforge mailing list for linux-ntfs development to the
Maintainers file. List is: linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sourceforge.net It goes
together with the linux-ntfs project I registered on sourceforge where I
intend to upload my ntfs utilities together with documentation on NTFS as
soon as they are enough developed to not have changing
structures/functions/APIs on a daily basis...
- Changed NTFS status to "Maintained" rather than "Odd fixes" in
Maintainers file. I also added myself to the CREDITS file.
IMO this patch makes the code a lot more readable, more stable according to
my testing, (even though it still is not as good as it should be but at
least it holds up a lot more then it did before, it managed to sift through
more than 10Gb of NTFS disk running md5sum on each file before it
collapsed, doing it on two different SCSI disks simultaneously whereas it
used to collapse a lot more quickly just using a single disk before), and
last but not least gives me a good basis to begin hacking on it more
intensely. - The next big step will be to replace the IMHO ugly
NTFS_PUT*(ptr + ofs) = value and var = NTFS_GET*(ptr + ofs) to actual use
of structures describing the ntfs on-disk structures (the header files and
utilities for NTFS access and testing are cooking nicely, if a bit slowly).
Best regards,
Anton Altaparmakov
Linux NTFS Maintainer
--
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he
learned in school." - Albert Einstein
--
Anton Altaparmakov Voice: +44-(0)1223-333541(lab) / +44-(0)7712-632205(mobile)
Christ's College eMail: AntonA@bigfoot.com / aia21@cam.ac.uk
Cambridge CB2 3BU ICQ: 8561279
United Kingdom WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 23 2001 - 21:00:15 EST