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ext4-rs can extract the basicstat information, directory listings, and file contentfrom real images generated by other tools, and by the Linux kernel.

This operates directly on partitions. To read actual disc images, probably need to handlepartition tables. This can be accomplished with thebootsector crate.

All basic file types are represented: files, directories, symlinks, char and block devices,fifos and sockets. Hard links are not a type of thing that makes sense: the item is just inmultiple directories.

• No support for extended flags (e.g.immutable,append-only).
• Probably contains overflows and fencepost errors, many of which Rust will translate topanics for you. At least, in debug mode.

This is not a filesystem driver. It does not support efficiently modifying real filesystems.Currently, it doesn't support modifying anything at all, but that may change.

I'm not especially interested in resource-constrained platforms: memory and IO are not usedefficiently.

• 0.10.0: move topositioned_io2 over weird seeking;rust 1.59
• 0.7.0: userust 1.34 features to removecast dependency
• 0.6.0: usefailure for error handling
• 0.5.0: updatebitflags for associated constants, and rename some public constants.
• 0.4.1: fix for an infinite loop parsing directory entries

Rust 1.59 (Debian Bookworm /edition = "2021") is supported, and checked by CI.Updating this is a semver bump.

Some of the tests read generated image files. These images are not directly checked into git,and will be unpacked bybuild.rs. These files are apparently very large, but should takevery little space. This requires a decenttar to be on the path.

These test assets can be rebuilt (on Linux, with root) by running./extract-test-data --refresh.

The code is licensed under the super-permissive MIT license.

However, a number of struct and bitfield definitions, and some maths expressions,are lifted directly from the Linux, or e2fsprogs, source code. These code-bases areunder the GPLv2. I believe this to be fair use: these placesare the documentation,and only interface definitions have been extracted, no code. I leave the final decisionto you.

This would have been practically impossible without the work aDjwong has done ontheext4 disk layout page onthe kernel wiki. I believe this person isDarrick Wong. Thanks, man.