Related to a previous post on installing OPENSTEP on a CompactFlash card:
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1616I started looking around for a program that can read the NEXTSTEP UFS file system from my Windows box. I was able to get a raw dump of the CF card by using a regular 'dd' tool. And then with some modifications to the open-source ufs2tool, I am able to list and read files from the raw disk image. Since the file system was installed on black hardware, all the integers (i.e., lengths, block numbers) needed to be interpreted big-endian.
Here's a screenshot:
http://picasaweb.google.com/simplepractices/Posts/photo#5237519942469616290Bits are available at:
http://www.simplepractices.com/files/ns_ufs2tool.zipI'd really like to see if others could use it on other disk images (say one taken from a SCSI disk removed from black hardware). I'm not sure, but almost certain, that it will not work against disk images from x86 hardware -- I removed a lot of the code that deal with the MBR and PC-oriented partition tables.
/pitz
wow, I never heard of user mode UFS tools...
That's NEAT!
thnx for posting, I just used it and it works great!!! DD is great for making quick and easy backups, this tool is great to see that it worked!
Hi,
great to see a user-mode tool for reading NeXT ufs. Could you please provide the source code for your modifications, since such a tool would also be useful for non-Windows OSes?
Thanks, cuby
I've updated my Windows-based UFS program to be able to read CD images and even diskette images.
You can now run it like:
ns_ufs2tool 4.2_Install_Disk.floppyimage -l
ns_ufs2tool NS33.iso -l
I will soon release the source to it, after I clean up some of my crappy coding, and get the framework ready for a Windows installable file system (so that you can mount the UFS file system as just another Windows drive, probably readonly).
Enjoy!
/pitz
hey, any updates? :)
It's not for Windows, but the recently released "ancientfs" plug-in for MacFUSE (
http://www.osxbook.com/blog/2008/12/16/more-user-space-file-system-goodies/) supposedly allows you to access a NeXTStep or Openstep discs on OS X.
I actually posted a link to this thread on OSNews's article for ancientFs the other day...
Its not a "Plugin" more a "search over the net for the right repository and compile your own and try to figure out how to use it without much documentation for the next couple of days" sort of thing.
and a 10.5 only thingy. so i'm back to square one. :-(