Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cygwin-unsubscribe-archive-cygwin=delorie DOT com AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>,
	<http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Message-ID: <000b01beed41$72349b60$cac656d1@hercules>
From: "Chris Telting" <telting AT sprynet DOT com>
To: "Cygwin Mailing List" <cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
References: <Pine DOT LNX DOT 4 DOT 10 DOT 9908230922050 DOT 3820-100000 AT www DOT arte DOT unipi DOT it>
Subject: Re: Possibilities for ext2fs
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 01:28:14 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300

> > I was just wondering if anyone has considered extending the mount
> > system such that you could access ext2 partitions under nt.  The
> > file access would no doubt be slow but it might be usful.
> >
> > Is the mount system adaptable to this or would it require a redesign?
>
> I don't think the mount system is the clue. Fact is, I know of no free IFS
> toolkit for Windows NT, and it is my understanding (from some hints in the
> NT 5.0b3, a.k.a. Win2k, DDK documentation) that there are some non-trivial
> changes from release 4.0 to release 5.0, making it a pretty difficult (if
> _VERY_ interesting) option. I hope I'll be shown wrong, of course...

Under nt you can open and write to all non mounted volumes as simple
files which you open, read, write, etc.  An nt filesystem driver would not
be as useful since the file system models are different.  It quite possible
at least under nt to just rewrite the ext2 and main filesytem subsystem
(although the later could be cut out) from linux to allow mounting an ext2
volume under bash with all the bell and whistles of that filesystem.  File
access would be slower for an initial implementation.

So you don't need to write an nt filesystem driver though that might be
nice.  For functionality it's easy to write a user mode driver.  Ultimetly
for speed there could be a combo driver or two drivers to provide
full functionally and better speed with cygwin

But speed isn't an issure with cygwin.  Cygwin is a porting/comatabilty
environment and a very good one.  I was just thinking that a native ext2
partition might be nice for the environment.  Just a week or two to port
driver code.

I could do it but there is the issue of the whole mount sybsystem under
cygwin.  I not fimilular with the implementation of it internally but it
might
be minimal and need to be redesigned.  Coding it is the easy part.
Politics and design isn't.

But still it would be nice to share files between linux as well have have
working permissions, links and other such features.


BlueCoder
bluecoder AT rocketmail DOT com
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.



--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com