Subject: SUBMISSION: vmount -- Linux filesystems for NEXTSTEP
From: Christian Starkjohann <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Nov 1996 04:18:44 GMT

vmount is now available from
	ftp://hal.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/NeXT/tools/vmount-0.0*

It is best explained by quoting from the README:

* What does vmount do?
======================
vmount is a utility that allows you to mount foreign filesystems in your
directory hierarchy. It uses the NFS-interface to the kernel to make the
files available and the Linux code for the lowlevel filesystem access.

* What filesystems can currently be accessed?
=============================================
The filesystem sources are taken from the Linux 2.0.25 kernel, which supports
the following filesystems for disk devices:
    ext         the old Linux native filesystem
    ext2        the new Linux native filesystem
    xiafs       (don't know)
    minix       the minix filesystem (Linux floppies)
    umsdos      unix permissions on top of a FAT filesystem
    msdos       normal FAT filesystem
    vfat        FAT filesystem with long filenames (Win95,
                NT compatible)
    iso9660     CDROM filesystem
    xenix       (don't know)
    sysv        (don't know)
    coherent    (don't know)
    hpfs        the OS/2 filesystem
    affs        the Amiga Fast FileSystem
    ufs         (don't know)
I don't know whether all of them are implemented for read and write.
I have tested (only very short tests) read and write for:
    ext2, minix, umsdos, msdos, vfat

* What do I need to run vmount?
===============================
To run vmount:
1.) An i386 based machine (you probably don't need vmount on others...).
2.) NEXTSTEP 3.2 or higher (I have only tested on 4.0, however).

To compile from the sources:
1.) NEXTSTEP 3.3 Developer or higher. I have also tested with gcc 2.7.2
    and NEXTSTEP 3.2 Developer, this works too.
2.) GNU-make. It is rumored that 4.0 comes with GNU-make, but I have not
    found it on my 4.0 until now ...

And, of course, you need the vmount distribution:
    vmount-0.0.I.b.gnutar.gz        for the binary only distribution
    vmount-0.0.I.s.gnutar.gz        for the vmount sources
    vmount-Linux-2.0.25.s.gnutar.gz for the Linux filesystem sources

You can get these files from
    ftp://hal.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/NeXT/tools/

If vmount is stable enough (in it's development, but hopefully in
operation, too), I will upload to the main NeXT archives.

* How reliable is it?
=====================
I'm afraid not very. I have done only limited testing and have still
found many bugs (most of these are fixed now, however). I would not
trust vmount to have write access to a partition or disk with valuable
data. If you want to test vmount for a while before you use it on your
real data, you can run it with a small spare partition, with a ZIP
drive, with a floppy (although I have not figured out how to access the
raw data on floppies yet) or on a disk image file. Please mail me your
experiences. Success stories are preferred, of course :-).

--
Christian Starkjohann <[email-masked]>
or <[email-masked]>, finger for PGP Public Key.
PGP fingerprint: DF FD 40 60 91 6A 14 1C  CD 2C E9 07 38 AE CB 4E