> > > Hint: Create a bunch of files (say four 8MB ones) with "dd"", and use
> > > the loop device to make them look like block devices. Format them,
> > > and play with them :-) I don't recommend you put them on a fs you
> > > are afraid to use (just being paranoid).
> >
> > The problem is that this code is what you will be using for your
> > regular file system access, so, if I introduced a bug in the generic
> > code, well, uhm, ahem, you will suffer the problems of this as well:-)
>
> No kidding...hence my warning about being paranoid. The idea of
> using the loop device was to avoid having to re-partition for
> testing purposes.
when once i felt like doing some serious ext2fs hacking, i copied fs/ext2
to fs/ext3, duplicated some stuff in filesystems.c, also copied
include/linux/*ext2* to ext3 (also some other include files need to be
slightly extended too last i remember). Thus i could use the
'experimental' version together with the 'stock' version ;) worked like a
charm.
of course you should do this without any backups, on your friendly local
production system ;)
-- mingo