1ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor, version e2fsprogs 2 3 4This version of ext2ed has been modified and updated by Theodore Ts'o 5for inclusion with the e2fsprogs package. It now builds with modern 6ncurses and I've fixed various small bugs, particular in the redrawing 7and resizing functions. 8 9It is currently not built by default -- the top-level e2fsprogs 10Makefile doesn't recurse into this directory. This is because ext2ed 11has a number of VERY SERIOUS shortcomings: 12 131) It doesn't work on filesystems bigger than 2GB 14 152) It assumes that all's the world an Intel, and assumes that 16 everything is in Intel (little-endian) byte order. 17 18Fixing either of these problems would be non-trivial, and so I at this 19point DO NOT RECOMMEND that distributions try to include this program, 20even as modified and updated in e2fsprogs. This especially goes for 21Debian, where the Debian maintainer for e2fsprogs has a history of 22making authorized changes to e2fsprogs to include programs that aren't 23supported, and then starts bugging me with bug reports. YES I KNOW. 24THIS PROGRAM HAS HORRIBLE SHORTCOMINGS. IT IS INCLUDED HERE ONLY 25BECAUSE IT'S A CONVENIENT WAY FOR (FOR E2FSPROGS DEVELOPERS ON INTEL 26MACHINES) TO GENERATE TEST CASES BY SELECTIVELY CORRUPTING 27FILESYSTEMS. I WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS PROGRAM FOR USE BY GENERAL USERS 28SO PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE IT IN A DISTRIBUTION. 29 30I have currently disabled the use of GNU Readline in this program, 31because readline and ncurses really don't play well together at all. 32Readline assumes that it can write arbitrary text to the screen 33(especially when it tries to print out a completion list), which just 34doesn't work with ncurses. Fixing this so they would work together 35would require wholesale changes to readline. 36 37 Theodore Ts'o 38 tytso@MIT.EDU 39 May 12, 2001 40 41---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 43ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor, version 0.2 44------------------------------------------------------ 45 46This is version 0.2 of ext2ed - The extended-2 filesystem editor. 47 48Modifications on Apr 5 2001 49This is minor bug fixes to ext2ed, as of April 2001. 50It supports modern ext2 version that has file type in directory structure 51and fixes the misunderstanding between ncurses and 52readline. 53 54I first applied patches from Red Hat except the one for readline that 55rewrote a readline behavior. 56 57Globals diffs between version 0.1 and 0.2 is stored in file : 58 diff-ext2ed.1.2 59 60Christian Bac <Christian.Bac@nt-evry.fr> 61 62---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63 64Documentation 65------------- 66 67ext2ed's documentation consists of three documents: 68 691. The user's guide. 702. Technical overview of the ext2 filesystem. 713. The EXT2ED design and implementation document. 72 73Those documents are available in the doc directory, in linuxdoc-sgml and 74postscript formats. 75 76The documentation is also available online at: 77 78http://tochnapc2.technion.ac.il 79 80under the ext2ed section. 81 82Installation 83------------ 84 85ext2ed requires the kernel sources and the readline and ncurses packages. 86Please edit the makefile if you are using an "old" version of ncurses (See the 87details below) or if gcc can't find the various header files and libraries. 88 89To install, simply issue a 'make' command to compile and a 'make install' 90command to install. I have also included an already compiled linux a.out 91binary. 92 93ext2ed and ncurses 94------------------ 95 96ext2ed uses the ncurses library for terminal output. It is very important 97that ncurses will be properly installed on your system: 98 991. 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 1052. 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 1113. 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 1174. The precompiled 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 123Running ext2ed 124-------------- 125 126For those of you who don't like reading lengthy articles, here are a few 127basic guidelines: 128 1291. 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 1352. 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 1393. 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 1434. Use the 'setdevice' command to open an ext2 filesystem. 144 e.g. 'setdevice /dev/hda1'. 145 1465. If the filesystem is an ext2 filesystem and ext2ed fails to 147 autodetect this, use the 'ForceExt2 on' configuration file option. 148 1496. 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 154Feel free to send me feedback with anything regarding to ext2ed. 155 156Enjoy, 157 158Gadi Oxman <tgud@tochnapc2.technion.ac.il> 159Haifa, August 23 1995 160 161