On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 11:52:38AM -0600, MirJafar Ali wrote: > > Hope you will forgive me for asking some very simple question about > e2fsprogs. I am very new to the kernel as > well as file system programming. > > My task is to collect superblock, inode, bitmap ( or free list) information > from ext2/ext3 filesysteam. After searching > the google, I came to know about e2fsprogs, which I was able to install and > use at least "dumpe2fs" utility. This > utility do not provide timestamp of each allocated inode and I am thinking > of modifying source code of e2fsprogs. Um, this wouldn't be for a school assignment, would it? Why are you being asked to do this? What is the high level problem are you trying to solve, or the high-level goal you are trying to accomplish? > My two questions are: > > 1. Is it correct to use "dumpe2fs" program and modify for timestamp ? Probably not. You might want to look at the "debugfs" program, which is also included in e2fsprogs. Reading the man pages would alos be a good idea. Do you realize that these programs were probably already installed on your Linux system? > 2. I could not understand the main purpose of e2fsprogs. Am I correct to > assume that this program extract information > from the existing ext2/ext3 filesystem. E2fsprogs is a suite of programs that provide the userspace support for the ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems. So mke2fs wil create a new file system; debugfs is the program that allows you to look at and manipulate low-level file system structures conveniently from userspace (for debugging or developer convenience; users of file systems shouldn't be using this for their everyday activities); e2fsck is the filesystem consistency checker, and so on. > Why there are ext2_inode > datastructure defined in these programs ? Why couldn't > these programs read existing datastructures of inode ? > 3. Are these user level or kernel level programs ? OK, now I'm *sure* this is for a school assignment. > 4. I want to have my own policies of allocatiing datablocks in some > cylinder group instead of using ext2 default policy ? What > should I do for that ? If you can't tell the difference between user and kernel level programs, you're probably way out of your depth to be trying to do this. I suggest you talk to your professor or recitation instructor.... - Ted > I know, these must be silly questions, but I will learn from your > response. Mir. _______________________________________________ Ext3-users mailing list Ext3-users@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ext3-users
