From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 22 23:51:33 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 123E016A4CE for ; Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:51:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from gidgate.gid.co.uk (gid.co.uk [194.32.164.225]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5965243D41 for ; Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:51:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rb@gid.co.uk) Received: (from rb@localhost) by gidgate.gid.co.uk (8.11.7/8.11.6) id i2N7pTV74400; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:51:29 GMT (envelope-from rb) Message-Id: <6.0.3.0.2.20040323074601.03672650@gid.co.uk> X-Sender: rbmail@gid.co.uk (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.3.0 Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:51:21 +0000 To: Luigi Rizzo From: Bob Bishop In-Reply-To: <20040322174509.A28739@xorpc.icir.org> References: <20040322174509.A28739@xorpc.icir.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: userland|unprivileged file system handling tools X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:51:33 -0000 Hi, At 01:45 23/03/2004, Luigi Rizzo wrote: >We seem to lack tools that allow the generation/handling of file >system images without root privs. The 'standard techniques' used >to build the bootable floppies rely on vnconfig/mdconfig, disklabel, >fsck and mknod which all must run as root. > >Colin Percival pointed me to ports/sysutils/makefs which builds an >almost correct fs image -- it has a couple of bugs, one which is >trivially fixed, the other one which could be cured by a pass of >fsck. There is still the issue of creating a label for the image >(which right now i do using a small C program), and handling device >nodes (not an issue on 5.x, but this could be possibly fixed with >some makefs extension). > >So: > > + is there interest in having makefs become part of the > standard system, instead of a port ? Why not just teach newfs to work on a plain file too, ... > + how hard would it be to teach disklabel and fsck to > work on files (filesystem images) as well as devices ? ... which really shouldn't be hard. Although you might want to have the capability protected by an option to avoid mistakenly creating weird files under /dev. >cheers >luigi > >_______________________________________________ >freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list >http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current >To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Bob Bishop +44 (0)118 977 4017 rb@gid.co.uk fax +44 (0)118 989 4254