Thanks. I really do miss the disk visualizations of the DOS and Norton Disk Doctor diagnostics and defragmenters from the old days. The one for the original Mac was pretty incredible due to high res graphics, even had color coded filetypes, etc if memory serves.
Linux never had a good one to my knowledge. Improved filesystems reduced the need and then SSDs delivered the deathblow.
But I feel like the visualization was useful in itself to see what was happening on the storage device and unfortunately forgotten due to those improvements.
thats very cool. i feel like a long time ago we used to be able to cat /dev/hda1 > /dev/video ? but maybe im imagining things. i know you could do it with audio.
Yeah, it would work with /dev/dsp, the primary interface for audio IO in Open Sound System (OSS) -- the first media API for nx operating systems. Around the turn of the century it was replaced in the Linux kernel by the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). Which, to this day, is still the "lowest level" high performance way to do audio w/ linux.
As for _visualizing_ the audio as video, no, that was never possible w/o writing code. =) And to do it _well_, you need to do some math as well. I say this because I wrote that code in 2001, 2003, then again in 2008, then again later... it's a ... hobby of mine :)
Does anyone know if there exists a tool that can convert tarballs to filesystems and back. I know you can make a loopback device, but it can be pretty hard/impossible to do inside a container, and often requires special flags and privileges.
You can extract the tarball to a directory, then run mkfs.ext4 -d DIRECTORY FILENAME BLOCKS to create a filesystem[0]. You'll need to know how many blocks your filesystem needs to be in advance.
Unfortunately, mkfs.ext4 only works on Linux. There is no port for other operating systems.
I've been doing something similar recently, though it doesn't directly convert a tar to an ext4 FS. But maybe this can help you get to where you want to be.
On Alpine Linux:
```
apk add --no-cache coreutils e2fsprogs
```
```
#!/bin/sh
# Untar the tar file
mkdir -p /tmp/my_untarred_files_dir
tar -xvf my_tar_file.tar -C /tmp/my_untarred_files_dir
# Make an empty image file.
dd if=/dev/zero of="fs.raw" bs=1M count=1024
# Format the file as ext4 (with journaling) and copy untarred files into it
It's absolutely fantastic, how gracefully ext2/3/4 stood the test of time, for something designed in early 90s by people who hadn't had 30+ years of kernel hacking in their pockets (yet). While I generally prefer ZFS, ext4 remains a rock solid choice - I rarely have a reason to pick anything else (on Linux, at least).
Uses the ext4 file system --> "LUKS encryption and decryption: In the cryptsetup-laboratory with Termux (running under the Android 11 operating system), "cryptsetup reencrypt --disable-locks --type luks2", no root access, no loop device, and an unusable "mount" command.": https://old.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/18am78j/luks_encryp... (old.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/18am78j/luks_encryption_and_decryption_in_the/)
i am baffled this article used a usb stick instead of a file where it could have saved a lot of unnecessary i/o, but a good writeup. i had to implement ext4 support in something back in like 2017 and wish something like this existed
Readit News
https://buredoranna.github.io/linux/ext4/2020/01/09/ext4-viz...
Linux never had a good one to my knowledge. Improved filesystems reduced the need and then SSDs delivered the deathblow.
But I feel like the visualization was useful in itself to see what was happening on the storage device and unfortunately forgotten due to those improvements.
Even Windows XP had a graphical representation of the disk contents, and it animated during defrag.
As for _visualizing_ the audio as video, no, that was never possible w/o writing code. =) And to do it _well_, you need to do some math as well. I say this because I wrote that code in 2001, 2003, then again in 2008, then again later... it's a ... hobby of mine :)
For ext4, I recently saw a patch set on the mailing list[4].
Not sure about other filesystems tough.
[1] https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/squashfs-tools-ng/tar2s...
[2] https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/squashfs-tools-ng/sqfs2...
[3] https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/squashfs-tools/sqfstar....
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ext4/20230812150204.462962-2-j...
Unfortunately, mkfs.ext4 only works on Linux. There is no port for other operating systems.
[0] https://github.com/cedws/concrete-ubuntu/blob/0ae3f076c5a20d...
On Alpine Linux:
```
apk add --no-cache coreutils e2fsprogs
```
```
#!/bin/sh
# Untar the tar file
mkdir -p /tmp/my_untarred_files_dir
tar -xvf my_tar_file.tar -C /tmp/my_untarred_files_dir
# Make an empty image file.
dd if=/dev/zero of="fs.raw" bs=1M count=1024
# Format the file as ext4 (with journaling) and copy untarred files into it
mke2fs -t ext4 -j -d "/tmp/my_untarred_files_dir" "fs.raw"
```
If you want to make a qcow2 image, you can then do this:
```
apk add --no-cache qemu-img
qemu-img convert -O qcow2 "fs.raw" "fs.qcow2"
```
$ 7z l <image>
$ 7z x <image>
https://www.fsarchiver.org
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