Port PFS3 to Linux?

[slaapliedje]

I know PFS3 has been open sourced, and that rules.  But I have a request for anyone out there.  Maybe we could start some sort of bounty on it.  But would someone port PFS3 to Linux?  Or possibly even make a driver for Windows.

The reason I ask is, it'd be much easier to make backups / restores of your Amiga partitions if you could just plug it into a Linux machine via a USB bridge, and then use it as a native file system, rather than having to load it up via WinUAE (I'm not sure if FS-UAE has that ability yet, but I haven't tried it).

Anyone else think this is an awesome idea?  I know AFFS is out there for FFS, but I don't know many people who use that anymore (not to mention last I looked, it wasn't included in most Linux distros.)

slaapliedje

[Thomas]

You cannot make a true backup of an Amiga drive on Windows/Linux. You loose file notes and certain protection bits.

You better create an LhA archive on your Amiga (or in WinUAE if speed matters) and copy that to your Windows/Linux machine.

[pyrre]

I know PFS3 has been open sourced, and that rules.  But I have a request for anyone out there.  Maybe we could start some sort of bounty on it.  But would someone port PFS3 to Linux?  Or possibly even make a driver for Windows.

The reason I ask is, it'd be much easier to make backups / restores of your Amiga partitions if you could just plug it into a Linux machine via a USB bridge, and then use it as a native file system, rather than having to load it up via WinUAE (I'm not sure if FS-UAE has that ability yet, but I haven't tried it).

Anyone else think this is an awesome idea?  I know AFFS is out there for FFS, but I don't know many people who use that anymore (not to mention last I looked, it wasn't included in most Linux distros.)

slaapliedje

If i am not completely mistaken, winuae is capable of using amiga formated hard drives directly in any computer. Windows or linux (possibly even mac os).... At least it can do that to amiga formatted zip disks. this i have tried... making backup a whole lot easier....
make a uae hardfile copy content from hdd to it. make infinite backups...
I do so to my zip disks. and it just works...

[slaapliedje]

@Thomas  That makes sense.  Though I would think Linux at least would be able to handle something.  Windows, well not so much.

@pyrre  This I know, what I was wanting was something outside of WinUAE, mainly because not all features that WinUAE have been ported to the Linux version, though I could be wrong about that, I haven't used FS-UAE in a while.  Last time I tried a Linux UAE, it claimed it had support for the feature, but I could never get it to work, then I read that it wasn't complete.

I would think any full support would of course require a library for the file bits and notes of course.  Do the Linux hosted AROS distros have something like this?

slaapliedje

[buzz]

You cannot make a true backup of an Amiga drive on Windows/Linux. You loose file notes and certain protection bits.

You better create an LhA archive on your Amiga (or in WinUAE if speed matters) and copy that to your Windows/Linux machine.

A filesystem could make the additional attributes show up as .uaem files (which fs-uae supports). I recently backed up my Amiga UW-SCSI drives on linux, by mounting them in fs-uae, copying to a emulated "Directory", and then compressing that, so all permissions are preserved. To restore back later, I just do it in reverse.

[buzz]

You cannot make a true backup of an Amiga drive on Windows/Linux. You loose file notes and certain protection bits.

You better create an LhA archive on your Amiga (or in WinUAE if speed matters) and copy that to your Windows/Linux machine.

A filesystem could make the additional attributes show up as .uaem files (which fs-uae supports). I recently backed up my Amiga UW-SCSI drives on linux, by mounting them in fs-uae, copying to a emulated "Directory", and then compressing that, so all permissions are preserved. To restore back later, I just do it in reverse.

[XDelusion]

Just buy a MorphOS G4 tower based setup, you'll resolve all your drive reading problems without Linux and without file corruption.

[buzz]

Just buy a MorphOS G4 tower based setup, you'll resolve all your drive reading problems without Linux and without file corruption.

That's as helpful as when people ask how to do something in MySQL and someone writes back to use PostgreSQL..

it is completely possible as I mentioned above to do it with fs-uae on linux, and saves forking out for additional hardware, and a pricey OS licence.

Having a PFS3 FUSE fs or something on linux would still be a useful thing of course.

[Thorham]

You cannot make a true backup of an Amiga drive on Windows/Linux. You loose file notes and certain protection bits.

I always wondered why file notes aren't simply converted. It's not as if Windows doesn't have them. You can also store the protection bits in the comment. Shouldn't really be very hard.

[slaapliedje]

A filesystem could make the additional attributes show up as .uaem files  (which fs-uae supports). I recently backed up my Amiga UW-SCSI drives  on linux, by mounting them in fs-uae, copying to a emulated "Directory",  and then compressing that, so all permissions are preserved. To restore  back later, I just do it in reverse.    

Having a PFS3 FUSE fs or something on linux would still be a useful thing of course.

Yeah, that's basically what I've been doing with WinUAE, though I just have the emulated directory and have been just doing a straight copy within WinUAE.  Would rather do it in Linux.
Also, yeah, it'd be awesome to have a PFS3 Fuse fs.  After all, there is the AFFS somewhere out there.  Looks like the Debian kernel has the module for AFFS compiled, even with the 3.13 kernel.

slaapliedje

[nicholas]

For backups of Amiga drives using Linux just use dd.

[slaapliedje]

For backups of Amiga drives using Linux just use dd.

That only works if you already have a working setup.  I would like file access so I can edit things, tweak, then put back in my real Amiga.  

Eventually I'm going to look into setting up something like an NFS mount as a drive.  

slaapliedje

[XDelusion]

That's as helpful as when people ask how to do something in MySQL and someone writes back to use PostgreSQL..

it is completely possible as I mentioned above to do it with fs-uae on linux, and saves forking out for additional hardware, and a pricey OS licence.

Having a PFS3 FUSE fs or something on linux would still be a useful thing of course.

Perhaps, but having a MorphOS machine around really saves one a LOT of drama and needless configuration. Hopefully AROS' coy of HDtools will catch up and we can have at least 2 OS' that come in handy in this regard.