TODO - pub/scm/fs/ext2/e2fsprogs - Git at Google

 User request:

 BTW: Could you please add some sort of deleted and possibly corrupted file
      and inode list to e2fsck report. There should be filenames deleted
      from directory inodes, files with duplicate blocks e.t.c.
      It's pretty annoying to filter this information from e2fsck output
      by hand :-

 ------------------------------------------

 Add a "answer Yes always to this class of question" response.

 ----------------------------------

 ext2fs_flush() should return a different error message for primary
 versus backup superblock flushing, so that mke2fs can print an
 appropriate error message.

 ---------------------------------
 Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 21:46:14 +0100
 From: Sergio Polini <s.polini@mclink.it>


 I'm reading the sorce code of e2fsck 1.14.
 In pass2.c, lines 352-357, I read:

 if ((dirent->name_len & 0xFF) > EXT2_NAME_LEN) {
         if (fix_problem(ctx, PR_2_FILENAME_LONG, &cd->pctx)) {
                 dirent->name_len = EXT2_NAME_LEN;
                 dir_modified++;
         }
 }

 I think that I'll never see any messages about too long filenames,
 because "whatever & 0xFF" can never be "> 0xFF".
 Am I wrong?
 --------------------------------------

 Add chmod command to debugfs.

 ------------------------------------------

 Maybe a bug in debugfs v.1.14:
 if a file has more than one hardlink, only the first filename is shown when
 using command
         ncheck <inode>

 ------------------------------------

 Add a filesystem creation date to the superblock

 -----------------------------------
 Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 17:54:53 -0800 (PST)
 From: Alan Blanchard <alan@abraxas.to>
 To: tytso@MIT.EDU
 Subject: DEBUGFS - thanks and a feature idea
 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 Theodore:

 First, let me thank you for writing debugfs. Recently, my Linux box
 (RH 6.0, 400 MHz PIII, on a DSL line) was hacked into.  The intruder did
 an "rm -Rf" on a 34 GB drive with about 5GB of data on it.  I was able to
 restore essentially the entire thing with debugfs and a bit of C code and Perl.
 Actually, I could have done the entire thing with debugfs and Perl, but I
 thought it would be too slow.

 During this exercise, I noticed that one small feature was lacking that would
 have made my job a bit easier.  The length of a deleted directory is
 reported as 0, hence debugfs won't dump the contents of the directory to a
 file using the "dump" command.  The only thing that saved me was that the
 list of disk blocks is not zeroed out.  I was able to dump the contents of the
 directories by using debugfs to get the relevant block numbers, then
 using dd to get the actual data.

 If debugfs had a feature where it ignored the size of a directory reported by
 the inode and instead just dumped all the blocks, it would have facilited
 things a bit. This seems like a very easy feature to add.

 Again, thanks for writing debugfs (and all the other Linux stuff you've written!).

 Cheers,
 Alan Blanchard
 alan@abraxas.to


 -------------------------------------------------------------------

 Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 14:07:12 -0800
 From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@www.transmeta.com>
 Subject: mkfs -cc and fsck -c

 b) An option to mkfs to zero the partition.  Yes, it can be done with
 dd, but it would be a nicer way of doing it.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------

 Add support for in ext2fs_block_iterate() for a returning the
 compressed flag blocks to block_iterate.  Change default to not return
 EXT2_COMPRESSED_BLKADDR.  Change e2fsck to pass this flag in.

 (The old compression patches did this by default all the time, which
 is bad, since it meant e2fsck never saw the EXT2_COMPRESSED_BLKADDR
 flagword.

 ------------------------------------------------------------

 E2fsck should offer to clear all the blocks in an indirect block, not
 the entire inode, so there's better recovery for when an indirect
 block gets trashed.


 -------------------------------------------------------------

 From: Yann Dirson - LOGATIQUE <Yann.Dirson@France.Sun.COM>
 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:52:13 +0100 (MET)

 During my experiments on the broken system, I noticed the following in
 the badblocks program (which I'm aware is not designed for IDE drives)
 - I'd probably have already fixed them if my home system was up :(

 * the syntax summary documents 2nd arg as blocks_count, which should
 probably read something like end_count.

 * testing past end of device is not detected, and lists those blocks
 as bad, whereas they simply do not exist.


 I think I'll probably add a "max count" option to findsuper(8), so
 that I do not have to wait for the whole disk to be scanned when the
 system had to be launched with "init=/bin/sh", in which case Ctrl-[CZ]
 and friends appear to be absolutely ignored.


 Somewhat unrelated, I just noticed the
 http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2.html could be updated:

 - could mention SGI xfs (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/ - they just
   release 0.03 snapshot)

 ----------------------------------------------------------------

 Return-Path: <tytso@MIT.EDU>
 Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:20:14 -0500
 From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
 To: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl
 In-Reply-To: Rogier Wolff's message of Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:46:30 +0100 (MET),
 	<200002100746.IAA24573@cave.bitwizard.nl>
 Subject: Re: e2fsck request for enhancement.
 Phone: (781) 391-3464

    Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:46:30 +0100 (MET)
    From: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl (Rogier Wolff)

    Lately, while trying to recover a broken disk, my system froze (twice,
    until I tried something else) while copying the disk.

    So I had a file of about 50Mb that was growing frantically at the
    moment of the crash.

    e2fsck, then finds an indirect block that is completely bogus. It
    starts by asking me if it's ok to clear a few of the referenced
    blocks. I say yes. Then it comes to the conclusion:

       too many invalid blocks. Clear inode?

    and then I get the option to delete the whole file. Not to truncate
    the file to a "working" size.


    I'd MUCH rather have e2fsck say something like:

       inode 1234 references an invalid block 134345454. Hmm.
       inode 1234 references 567 out of 50176 invalid blocks,
 			  all near the end. Truncate file to 49152 blocks?

    Here you can see that of the 1024 blocks near the end of the file,
    only 567 were detected as invalid. However now 48Mb of the file will
    be recovered, instead of thrown away.

 That's a good point.  Actually, the right thing is for e2fsck to offer
 to clear all of the bad blocks in a particular indirect block.  I don't
 know how hard it would be to do that, but I'll put it on my e2fsprogs
 TODO list.

 							- Ted

 -----------------------------------------------------------------

 Debugfs's link command should set the file type information

 ---------------------------------------------------------------
	User request:

	BTW: Could you please add some sort of deleted and possibly corrupted file
	and inode list to e2fsck report. There should be filenames deleted
	from directory inodes, files with duplicate blocks e.t.c.
	It's pretty annoying to filter this information from e2fsck output
	by hand :-

	------------------------------------------

	Add a "answer Yes always to this class of question" response.

	----------------------------------

	ext2fs_flush() should return a different error message for primary
	versus backup superblock flushing, so that mke2fs can print an
	appropriate error message.

	---------------------------------
	Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 21:46:14 +0100
	From: Sergio Polini <s.polini@mclink.it>


	I'm reading the sorce code of e2fsck 1.14.
	In pass2.c, lines 352-357, I read:

	if ((dirent->name_len & 0xFF) > EXT2_NAME_LEN) {
	if (fix_problem(ctx, PR_2_FILENAME_LONG, &cd->pctx)) {
	dirent->name_len = EXT2_NAME_LEN;
	dir_modified++;
	}
	}

	I think that I'll never see any messages about too long filenames,
	because "whatever & 0xFF" can never be "> 0xFF".
	Am I wrong?
	--------------------------------------

	Add chmod command to debugfs.

	------------------------------------------

	Maybe a bug in debugfs v.1.14:
	if a file has more than one hardlink, only the first filename is shown when
	using command
	ncheck <inode>

	------------------------------------

	Add a filesystem creation date to the superblock

	-----------------------------------
	Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 17:54:53 -0800 (PST)
	From: Alan Blanchard <alan@abraxas.to>
	To: tytso@MIT.EDU
	Subject: DEBUGFS - thanks and a feature idea
	Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

	Theodore:

	First, let me thank you for writing debugfs. Recently, my Linux box
	(RH 6.0, 400 MHz PIII, on a DSL line) was hacked into. The intruder did
	an "rm -Rf" on a 34 GB drive with about 5GB of data on it. I was able to
	restore essentially the entire thing with debugfs and a bit of C code and Perl.
	Actually, I could have done the entire thing with debugfs and Perl, but I
	thought it would be too slow.

	During this exercise, I noticed that one small feature was lacking that would
	have made my job a bit easier. The length of a deleted directory is
	reported as 0, hence debugfs won't dump the contents of the directory to a
	file using the "dump" command. The only thing that saved me was that the
	list of disk blocks is not zeroed out. I was able to dump the contents of the
	directories by using debugfs to get the relevant block numbers, then
	using dd to get the actual data.

	If debugfs had a feature where it ignored the size of a directory reported by
	the inode and instead just dumped all the blocks, it would have facilited
	things a bit. This seems like a very easy feature to add.

	Again, thanks for writing debugfs (and all the other Linux stuff you've written!).

	Cheers,
	Alan Blanchard
	alan@abraxas.to


	-------------------------------------------------------------------

	Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 14:07:12 -0800
	From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@www.transmeta.com>
	Subject: mkfs -cc and fsck -c

	b) An option to mkfs to zero the partition. Yes, it can be done with
	dd, but it would be a nicer way of doing it.

	------------------------------------------------------------------

	Add support for in ext2fs_block_iterate() for a returning the
	compressed flag blocks to block_iterate. Change default to not return
	EXT2_COMPRESSED_BLKADDR. Change e2fsck to pass this flag in.

	(The old compression patches did this by default all the time, which
	is bad, since it meant e2fsck never saw the EXT2_COMPRESSED_BLKADDR
	flagword.

	------------------------------------------------------------

	E2fsck should offer to clear all the blocks in an indirect block, not
	the entire inode, so there's better recovery for when an indirect
	block gets trashed.


	-------------------------------------------------------------

	From: Yann Dirson - LOGATIQUE <Yann.Dirson@France.Sun.COM>
	Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:52:13 +0100 (MET)

	During my experiments on the broken system, I noticed the following in
	the badblocks program (which I'm aware is not designed for IDE drives)
	- I'd probably have already fixed them if my home system was up :(

	* the syntax summary documents 2nd arg as blocks_count, which should
	probably read something like end_count.

	* testing past end of device is not detected, and lists those blocks
	as bad, whereas they simply do not exist.


	I think I'll probably add a "max count" option to findsuper(8), so
	that I do not have to wait for the whole disk to be scanned when the
	system had to be launched with "init=/bin/sh", in which case Ctrl-[CZ]
	and friends appear to be absolutely ignored.


	Somewhat unrelated, I just noticed the
	http://web.mit.edu/tytso/www/linux/ext2.html could be updated:

	- could mention SGI xfs (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/ - they just
	release 0.03 snapshot)

	----------------------------------------------------------------

	Return-Path: <tytso@MIT.EDU>
	Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:20:14 -0500
	From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
	To: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl
	In-Reply-To: Rogier Wolff's message of Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:46:30 +0100 (MET),
	<200002100746.IAA24573@cave.bitwizard.nl>
	Subject: Re: e2fsck request for enhancement.
	Phone: (781) 391-3464

	Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 08:46:30 +0100 (MET)
	From: R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl (Rogier Wolff)

	Lately, while trying to recover a broken disk, my system froze (twice,
	until I tried something else) while copying the disk.

	So I had a file of about 50Mb that was growing frantically at the
	moment of the crash.

	e2fsck, then finds an indirect block that is completely bogus. It
	starts by asking me if it's ok to clear a few of the referenced
	blocks. I say yes. Then it comes to the conclusion:

	too many invalid blocks. Clear inode?

	and then I get the option to delete the whole file. Not to truncate
	the file to a "working" size.


	I'd MUCH rather have e2fsck say something like:

	inode 1234 references an invalid block 134345454. Hmm.
	inode 1234 references 567 out of 50176 invalid blocks,
	all near the end. Truncate file to 49152 blocks?

	Here you can see that of the 1024 blocks near the end of the file,
	only 567 were detected as invalid. However now 48Mb of the file will
	be recovered, instead of thrown away.

	That's a good point. Actually, the right thing is for e2fsck to offer
	to clear all of the bad blocks in a particular indirect block. I don't
	know how hard it would be to do that, but I'll put it on my e2fsprogs
	TODO list.

	- Ted

	-----------------------------------------------------------------

	Debugfs's link command should set the file type information

	---------------------------------------------------------------