Anyone know anything about these? I've got an image of a hard disk containing
Torch's System V.2 release, which I'm hoping to be able to read under Linux
(which supports sysv, but makes the point that sysv.2 only works on floppies)
Things that would be really useful to know:
1) Was there a standard partition table format for disks containing System V
filesystems? Possibly every vendor perhaps did their own thing, but maybe
there was a standard defined!
2) How do V.2 filesystems on floppy differ from V.2 filesystems on hard disks.
Having looked at the hard disk image in a hex editor, it seems that (at least
in Torch's case), the first 1024 bytes of the drive contain partition table
info. It's hard to deduce the actual format from the data I have, though.
If I strip off the first 1024 bytes of the image, then try and mount the image
under Linux as a sysv filesystem, it gives it a fair old go. I get "VFS: Found
a SystemV Release 2 FS (block size = 1024)" in the logs, but pulling up a
directory listing of the root gives me a few sanely-named files (no
directories), a few files with garbage names, and the following in the logs
for the mounted filesystem:
"Bad inode number on dev loop0: 23130 is out of range"
One of several things looks to be happening:
1) The filesystem/disk image is hosed anyway (probably not, but can't rule it
out right now).
2) The Linux sysv driver - just as the docs say - doesn't work on V.2
filesystems from hard disks, because they differ somehow from floppies.
3) Torch's idea of a sysv filesystem isn't quite the same as everyone else's.
(unlikely, but not impossible)
4) My guess about needing to rip out the first 1024 bytes from the image is
incorrect. (user error :-)
Fingers crossed it's (2), but I'd really like to rule out (4) at the moment.
Assuming it is (2), I'd like to modify the Linux sysv driver so that it *does*
working with hard disk images containing V.2 filesystems, so maybe someone out
there has some spec info...
cheers!
Jules