LK-ML & LND-ML, I have produced a patch for the NTFS driver as described below which I have sent to Alan Cox for inclusion in the next 2.4.0-acX kernel. Patch is generated against -ac9. The patch is large due to a large K&R-ification of the whole NTFS driver as well as error code conversion to being negative. Due to the size the patch is not attached but can be found on the linux-ntfs project (which I have taken the freedom to register) on sourceforge in the anonymous ftp area as: ftp://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/pub/linux-ntfs/patch-ntfs-010116-linux-2.4.0-ac9.bz2 *The patch doesn't touch any code outside the NTFS driver.* *Patch is tested for compilation both as module and in kernel (both RO and RW) and for functionality as module RW. - It compiles warning free on two different systems and runs at least as well as the original. My testing of write support didn't trash the partition I was writing to which is a big improvement from before. [Admittedly I used my NtfsFix utility (not yet publicly released but watch this space) before I rebooted into NT so this will have helped.]* Detailed description of patch: - Fix a *critical* bug in on disk structure laying out which always resulted in some certain attributes being corrupt! - Convert all error codes to being negative and being returned negative to the VFS. Including modifying all error handling to be consistently using negative numbers. This was suggested by Matthew Wilcox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. - Fix some other bugs, not as critical but help to make the driver more generally correct/stable (including on disk structures and in memory layout, such as fixing handling the update sequence number (or fixup as called in the driver), fixing searching for attributes which had some wrong assumptions, fix for some of the unicode stuff including endianness handling [There was a function half with and half without handling endianness!, and some not doing handling at all], possibly other one liners I can't remember). - Added several FIXMEs where the fix was not obvious/small. - Removed non-linux kernel related #ifdef-ed code as the new utilities I have started on will have a separate code base from the kernel mode driver (except for some structural header files perhaps which will be 1-to-1 copies of each other). - Changed NTFS driver version number to 010116. - Added new sourceforge mailing list for linux-ntfs development to the Maintainers file. List is: [EMAIL PROTECTED] It goes together with the linux-ntfs project I registered on sourceforge where I intend to upload my ntfs utilities together with documentation on NTFS as soon as they are enough developed to not have changing structures/functions/APIs on a daily basis... - Changed NTFS status to "Maintained" rather than "Odd fixes" in Maintainers file. I also added myself to the CREDITS file. IMO this patch makes the code a lot more readable, more stable according to my testing, (even though it still is not as good as it should be but at least it holds up a lot more then it did before, it managed to sift through more than 10Gb of NTFS disk running md5sum on each file before it collapsed, doing it on two different SCSI disks simultaneously whereas it used to collapse a lot more quickly just using a single disk before), and last but not least gives me a good basis to begin hacking on it more intensely. - The next big step will be to replace the IMHO ugly NTFS_PUT*(ptr + ofs) = value and var = NTFS_GET*(ptr + ofs) to actual use of structures describing the ntfs on-disk structures (the header files and utilities for NTFS access and testing are cooking nicely, if a bit slowly). Best regards, Anton Altaparmakov Linux NTFS Maintainer -- "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." - Albert Einstein -- Anton Altaparmakov Voice: +44-(0)1223-333541(lab) / +44-(0)7712-632205(mobile) Christ's College eMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cambridge CB2 3BU ICQ: 8561279 United Kingdom WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
