Subject: Re: Further observations...
To: Colin Wood <cwood@ichips.intel.com>
From: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 02/07/1998 13:33:05
On Sat, 7 Feb 1998, Colin Wood wrote:

> David A. Gatwood wrote:
> > On Sat, 7 Feb 1998, Colin Wood wrote:
> > 
> > > Justin R. Smith wrote:
> > > > 1. How does one access ordinary Macintosh files?  I noticed a command
> > > > mount_dos. Is there a corresponding operation for Macintosh files?
> > > 
> > > Not yet.  Everyone who has done work on Unix-based HFS support seems to
> > > have put it under the GPL, as a result, we don't have anything like that
> > > in the kernel.  However, there is an excellent set of utilities you can
> > > download and compile for this purpose, called the hfsutils.  I don't seem
> > > to have a copy of the URL at the moment, but I guess I should find it and
> > > add it to the FAQ....
> > 
> > There's an old one on puma, tho there are probably many newer versions.
> > 
> > Any chance of HFS support in an lkm?  I believe somebody said that would
> > get around the GPL issues.
> 
> Bill Studenmund and someone else who I can't remember at the moment worked
> on an implementation of hfsfs(?) as an LKM sometime last year, I think.
> However, I don't know what the final status of it was.  Bill?

Paul Goyette and I worked on hfsfs. We got it to where it'd work
single-user, but there was something wrong with how it handled buffers,
and it'd panic the kernel if anything else was using a filesystem at the
same time.

We both got bored with it. Buffer leaks like the one we have don't seem to
be easy to track down.

If anyone else wants to work on this, go for it. Though I'd recomend
instead that you port macfs, the linux HFS-reading FS. It seems to write
safely, and Paul Hargrove, its author, would be happy for there to be a
NetBSD port. Also, mkLinux seems to use it, so there'll be more long-term
support from Apple. It will still be GPL'd though. He received some
assistance from a mac-emulator company on the understanding that the code
stay GPL'd, and he is respecting that agreement.

It's fine for us to have a GPL'd code chunk in an lkm.

Take care,

Bill