Re: [RFC PATCH 00/27] Introduce ubifs_dump in ubifs-utils

[Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>]

Am 17.09.2015 um 07:39 schrieb Dongsheng Yang:
> On 09/16/2015 09:32 PM, Richard Weinberger wrote:
>> Yang,
>>
>> Am 19.08.2015 um 10:39 schrieb Dongsheng Yang:
>>> Hi Atem, Richard and Brian,
>>>     This patchset introduce a userspace tool named ubifs_dump
>>> to dump data from a ubi media.
>>>     It will dump the areas in ubifs, such as super block,
>>> master, log, lpt and main.
>>>     That's helpful for us to see what exactly written in
>>> media.
>>>     the [1/patch] is a RESEND patch, it restructures the mtd-utils.
>>> Please Brian help to take a look at it. thanx a lot. :)
>>>
>>> NOTE:
>>>     This patch set depends on a patch I sent out [ubifs: correct the size of nnode in memset]
>>> But you can get a full code at:
>>> https://github.com/yangdongsheng/mtd-utils.git ubifs_dump_v1
>>
>> I'm looking/testing right now your patches.
>> Your tools is useful. I like the idea, maybe the can change the name to
>> "ubifs_dump_meta"? Do you have plans to extend it?
> Hi Richard,
> 
> ubifs_dump_meta? Hmmm, but I also dump data nodes in it. Do you have
> some reason to rename it? Extend it? Of course, I would like to make it
> better and better. But the first step is making it in mtd-utils.

You are right.
Let's keep the name. It does the same as jffs2dump.

>> I'm asking because I've started working on an ubifs.fsck/debugfs tool based on
>> some scripts and hacky other tools I wrote some time ago.
>> So, let's coordinate and avoid double work.
> 
> Oh, sorry for sending my patch without any asking. I thought there is
> nobody caring about it. And what's more, I am planning to do a fsck.ubifs
> actually. Haha, so I think we can cooperate on it. Could you share more
> about your work so far?

It started as a simple tool to unpack UBIFS.
As unpacking involves also analyzing the whole file system we can extend
it to repair problems.
The first version will only be able to repair minor issue but I hope
we can add more advanced features step by step.

>>
>> It's first feature is being able to extract all files from an UBIFS.
>> Scanning and identifying all UBIFS nodes, as your tool does, is a subset
>> of the needed functionality. As you sent patches first I'll happily rebase
>> my tool to your patches.
> 
> Thanx a lot. :)
>> One of the major differences is that it will work without the UBI/UBIFS kernel
>> modules. You can use /dev/ubiXY or a plain nanddump.
>> I hope I can release the first version soon.
> 
> Yea, sounds very interesting, although I am not sure how it can be
> implemented. Looking forward your release.

You mean using a plain nanddump? It is not that hard, all you need is a "mini-UBI"
implementation. My current UBIFS unpacker works so far only with nanddumps.
It's the only thing I get from customers, nobody sends me an UBIFS only image. :D

Thanks,
//richard