Re: testing HFS+ journal replay against real Apple code

[Vyacheslav Dubeyko <slava@dubeyko.com>]

Hi Hin-Tak,

On Thu, 2014-02-06 at 13:45 +0000, Hin-Tak Leung wrote:
> Hi Vyacheslav,
> I was looking for powerpc emulation for a different purpose, and
> came upon this collection of ideas. Apple have released
> the bare darwin OS (kernel, command-line utils, etc without the Mac OS X
> GUI on top) as an installable ISO, I think darwin 8 is roughly equivalent
> to Mac OS X 10.4 . But as far as the file system driver is concerned,
> it should be sufficient for your needs for HFS+ inter-op.
> 
> So if you have a spare computer, you can just install it... 
> 
> http://www.opensource.apple.com/static/iso/
> 
> I am thinking of making a powerpc instance with PearPC (since I have
> other use of that) - apparently it work well enough, but the x86 install
> probably can work with an x86 emulator/vmware, etc.
> 
> That means you can simulate unclean shutdown, etc by killing the emulator
> in the middle of something, etc. and "mount -o loop -t hpfsplus" the image"
> should roll the journal, etc, right?
> 

Thank you for the advice. I'll consider this way.

Currently, I have for testing two MacMini with different versions of Mac
OS X for testing. And I use external flash sticks and external drives
for testing. I suppose that such way gives more freedom for generation
different HFS+ volumes' configurations (block size, journal size and so
on) and states (workloads, journal content, journal state and so on)
under Mac OS X than it can be achieved for rootfs. Also, such way gives
more precise way for sudden power-off emulation, I suppose.

But, anyway, your suggestion can be useful, I think.

Thanks,
Vyacheslav Dubeyko.