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Re: ext filesystem

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On 06/05/14 12:02, crankypuss wrote:
> On 05/05/2014 05:12 PM, David Brown wrote:
>> On 03/05/14 00:03, Bill Cunningham wrote:
>>> "David Brown" <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in message
>>> news:ljt4sv$5qq$1@dont-email.me...
>>>
>>>> That package is for people writing low-level routines for repairing or
>>>> checking ext file systems.  You are not doing anything like that, so
>>>> the
>>>> package is useless to you.  Don't bother looking at it.
>>>>
>>>> If you can say what you are trying to do, people can give you more
>>>> help.
>>>
>>>      Considering studying for an /interest/ in utilies for checking or
>>> changing things like inodes and so on. As a learning experience in
>>> dealing
>>> with filesystems.
>>>
>>
>> You won't learn anything - if you ever get anything running that
>> actually does anything to your inodes (assuming you know what they are),
>> you will screw up your filesystem.
>>
>> This sort of stuff is /advanced/ programming.  It makes sense for people
>> who have worked for years at kernel and OS programming - not for people
>> who have spent 20 years trying to learn C and still haven't figured out
>> what a pointer is.
>>
>> I am a great fan of learning, and encouraging people to learn and take
>> up hobbies.  But there comes a point when you have to face reality and
>> accept that you are not cut out for C programming.  Find yourself a
>> hobby that matches your abilities, and you will be much happier.
>
> That seems like a pretty harsh indictment, David; we don't know the guy,
> but you're assuming he's an idiot ("spent 20 years trying to learn C"
> etc) and you seem to be pretty condescending about it.

I don't know the guy personally, but I know the Usenet persona that is 
Bill Cunningham.  Take my word for it, or google him.  He is either 
deliberately trolling (in which case he deserves to be insulted or 
ignored), or he suffers from some sort of mental or psychological 
problems (in which case he should be encouraged to find a hobby that is 
more suited to his abilities).  I don't know which is the case here, and 
I therefore try to avoid insulting him - but I know it is pointless 
trying to help him with his C questions, and even more pointless helping 
him get himself into trouble with more advanced topics.

>
> Modifying inodes is not magic after all, every time somebody does a
> 'chmod' he's modified an inode even if he's used a high-level interface
> to do it.

That is like saying planes are not complicated to build - after all, you 
use one every time you fly somewhere.

>  I'm not familiar with the referenced "e2fsprogs-devel"
> package, but it's either a set of commands or a set of subroutines; if
> it was a set of subroutines he could read the code and figure it out. If
> it's a set of commands, maybe what he needs is to find the source code
> and read that, sometimes that's the only documentation around.
>
> Bill, when you say "utilies for checking or changing things like inodes
> and so on" it sounds like what you're really after is a file-manager
> that will give you a little more information/control than usually comes
> out of the box.  If that's what you're looking for, there are a bunch of
> alternatives available, you might find something already written that
> will do more of what you want.
>
> Personally I'd advise against setting out to write your own file
> manager, not because filesystems are magic, but because file-managers
> need a user-interface and the available fullscreen stuff seems pretty
> lame imo.

File managers are at a completely different level from e2fsprogs-devel 
libraries.  Lots of people can (and do) write file managers of various 
sorts - they have nothing to do with the low-level extX data structures 
for which you need the e2fsprogs-devel libraries.

And Bill has not the faintest idea about what he wants to do here - he 
is merely picking a random library and thinking it would be cool to 
understand it.  But since he does not understand C, nor does he 
understand filesystems or the extX filesystems in particular, any time 
spent with these libraries would be wasted for him.  I am merely trying 
to encourage him to spend his time and effort on something he will be 
more successful at.

>
> Some existing file-managers support user-written extensions.  I use
> Nautilus and it supports user-written extensions, it deals with the
> user-interface issues and just passes a list of files to the extension.
>   You might consider that as a way of expanding your knowledge.
>
> To look more closely at an inode, see "man stat".  To do it from within
> a C program see "man fstat".  I do a lot of prototyping in PHP[1] and it
> provides numerous builtins for examining inodes, other languages might
> provide better support or be more appropriate for what you want to do;
> you might look into Perl or Python.
>
> [1] not the greatest of languages, but if you beat your head against it
> for long enough you can make it do most anything as far as applications go.

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ext filesystem "Bill Cunningham" <nosapm@nspam.invalid> - 2014-04-30 19:04 -0400
  Re: ext filesystem Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2014-05-01 05:59 +0000
    Re: ext filesystem "Bill Cunningham" <nosapm@nspam.invalid> - 2014-05-02 18:01 -0400
  Re: ext filesystem David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-05-01 11:41 +0200
    Re: ext filesystem "Bill Cunningham" <nosapm@nspam.invalid> - 2014-05-02 18:03 -0400
      Re: ext filesystem David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-05-06 01:12 +0200
        Re: ext filesystem crankypuss <crankypuss@nomail.invalid> - 2014-05-06 04:02 -0600
          Re: ext filesystem Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2014-05-06 09:00 -0600
            Re: ext filesystem crankypuss <crankypuss@nomail.invalid> - 2014-05-07 00:42 -0600
          Re: ext filesystem David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-05-07 00:27 +0200
            Re: ext filesystem crankypuss <crankypuss@nomail.invalid> - 2014-05-07 00:58 -0600
          Re: ext filesystem "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2014-05-13 00:44 -0400

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