Bug#200153: ITP: e2tools -- utilities for manipulating files in an ext2/ext3 filesystem

[Robert Millan <zeratul2@wanadoo.es>]

On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 11:35:29PM +0200, Ralf Treinen wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 05, 2003 at 05:24:21PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> > 
> > E2tools is a simple set of GPL'ed utilities to read, write, and manipulate
> > files in an ext2/ext3 filesystem.
> 
> please excuse my ignorance - what would be the advantage of these
> tools over the core file utilities which use the VFS layer?

The problem is that for monolithic kernels the filesystem code lies in
kernelspace, hence for security reasons filesystems can only be attached
(via mount) by root. (This isn't applicable to the GNU system, though,
since Hurd's ext2fs is implemented as a userspace server that normal users
can run)

With this utils, normal users still can't use standard filesystem C library
calls over their custom ext2fs image, but may use commands like e2cp or
e2mkdir for basic manipulation.

Btw, I need this to integrate grub-disk into the grub package (see #190392).

-- 
Robert Millan