Newbegins' Explore2fs + j.g. owen, Mon 12/10/2007 4:41 pm

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EXPLORE2FS OPERATION

It's supposed to start up and show on the left panel any Linux partitions on your Windows 98 / XP machine. Then you can click on the plus sign and explore about, like a regular program.

(Actually, it's looking for ext2/ext3 file system Linux partitions -- which are by far the most common Linux file systems.)

RIGHT-CLICK ON A FILE in the right panel to "export" it -- i.e. copy it to a location in Windows. When multiple files are selected, you get a chance to enter a directory name explicitly, or do that stupid click-forever directory dialog.

Right-click, "view", will attempt to invoke the shell association on the file, after copying it to a temporary location: viewing "snapshot.png" here invoked Paintshop Pro on the file! If there's no available association, it'll then run whatever's specified in "view / options / general tab / viewer program" on the file.

Right-click, "clip selected names", copies a lovely formatted copy of the directory entry to the clipboard.

XP TESTING: After the usual mysterious difficulties, I managed to install Fedora 3 on an XP system, which Explore2fs saw happily. But apparently PM8 *doesn't* install a bogus EXT2_PARTITION_MAGIC (q.v. below) in the XP version! Or at least not on Thursday.... How amusing....

EXPLORE2FS CAN'T WRITE FROM WINDOWS TO LINUX: No no; there's code in there where he was thinking about it, but didn't do it, and my life is short.

NOTE that Linux is perfectly happy with Windows 98's FAT32 file system, and can read and write to it without error. This is not true of XP'S NTFS; Linux these days can read from it (?), but it's not happy writing NTFS (?) although work continues.... Nothing the talented Explore2fs does changes that.

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ASSUME EXT2: ON BY DEFAULT

When explore2fs doesn't find any Linux, and you *know* you have a Linux ext2 or ext3 partition in there somewhere -- particularly, apparently, if you created your Linux partitions with the program Partition Magic, version 8, in Windows 98 -- you can try "View / Options / General tab" and check the jgo hack "Assume Ext2". When you do that, it'll try and frighten you -- but so far, all that's happened in *minutes* of testing is, if it's got a partition that isn't really ext2/3, clicking the "+" sign just GPFs a bit harmlessly.

In fact, it's so non-destructive I just turned it on by default.

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NT/LINUX PARTITION NUMBERS

They were wrong on at least one NT machine (hdb6 showed-up as hdb3), so I adjusted them. As it turned-out, out of abounding ignorance. Hence the previous "zcount" option is now the humble "Partition # fudge" which will get added/subtracted from whatever number the program thinks it should be. And it works on NT *and* W98! ... Bon apetite!

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DEBUG INFO

If you still can't get it to work, try "View / Options / Debug tab", and set debug level to "high", and probably click "Show debug window". That'll emit huge amounts of info about what the program thinks it's doing -- and an invitation to pester the estimable Newbigin about problems!

If "Auto save debug log" is checked, then all this stuff'll be saved in a file called "explore2fs debug log.txt" in the directory where Explore2fs was run. There's a big bunch of stuff, and all very interesting no doubt; at least, that's how I developed my "Assume Ext2" hack, after I added some lines here and there to make it more (less?) readable.

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WINDOWS 98 LARGE DISC SUPPORT

32 gigabytes? 120 gigabytes? I don't really know; my largest *XP* disc is 120G, and I max out at 30 on w98. But supposedly they don't work with explore2fs unless you get an older version from Newbigin, q.v.

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ORIGINAL AUTHOR JOHN NEWBIGIN

You can find all about him in "help/about". Newbigin is some kind of Australian genius, wise in the ways of file systems, and probably knows too much for his own good. One startling fault: Newbigin has a low opinion of Windows 98, the crashing glory of Microsoft, and the affiliation of the majority of the residents in my Computer Attic.

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YOUR HOST J.G. OWEN

I'm an amateur, and stand in the shadow of fellows like Newbigin; but I have my harmless amusements, exposed at http://owenlabs.home.att.net/.

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LICENSE

The admirable Newbigin has licensed the source to Explore2fs under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE which should turn-up in the source directory somewhere.

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SOURCE

I have attempted to denote my contributions to the program via "{$ifdef JGO}" statements here and there, but you really shouldn't expect to be able to turn them off and get the original version -- which of course is probably still available; see "help / about".

EXT2_PARTITION_MAGIC

My major contribution, as it worked out, was to add "EXT2_PARTITION_MAGIC" to the detection process; grep for it in the source. EXT2_PARTITION_MAGIC is the value -- $0FFF -- which Partition Magic, Version 8, stuffed in the "magic" field in ext2/ext3 superblocks, instead of the supposedly official $EF53 -- but only when PM8 was run in Windows 98, aparently!

I have no idea what these things mean, but I'm pretty sure numerous pilgrims set-up their Linux partitions with Partition Magic -- I've actually seen it mentioned in a Linux magazine! And it isn't going to be fixed; or at least there hasn't been a new PM version since 2002.... And apparently, PM8 running under XP *doesn't do that*; it installs the official magic $EF53. Or at least on Thursday....

But it should be noted that Linux doesn't seem to care about what value is in the "magic" field; or at least, works happily with $0FFF or $EF53.... Whatever....

COMPILING THE SOURCE

I use Delphi version 5 (also known as the "last working version") for these kinds of things and it seemed to work; you of course have this obsolete environment readily available; newer Delphis might work (but in general, I doubt it). I've tried to retain Newbigins' directory structure more-or-less, so the source is at /source wherever you unzipped it.

INSTALL EX2FS.DPK

You have to install some components, specifically "source\components\ex2fs.dpk". I've never actually found any instructions on how to do this, but what seems to work, is run the Delphi environment, probably close everything, and then "file / open" and specify ex2fs.dpk. Then a form pops-up, and you click compile (?), install. I used to think I had to add the directory location to the library path or something -- but apparently not.

Mon 12/10/2007 3:47 pm. I just followed my instructions and some weird error messages showed-up; apparently I somehow used my sbrs.pas *in* the component.


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