Virtual Volumes
Now with new ReiserFS Support
Explore2fs has been around for a long time now, and although I try and keep it up to date with the latest advances in linux storage, the time has come to redesign it to support these features from the ground up.
Kernel mode drivers like ext2ifs also suffer from an inability to read LVM2 which is the default on a lot of distros now. Any new solution needs to solve this problem, and with a minimum of duplication.
Current Features of Virtual Volumes:
- Supported by all versions of Windows (Vista is still Work In Progress)
- Read and Write LVM2 (linear stripes only)
- Read and Write EXT2/EXT3 (e2fsprogs/libext2fs)
- Read ReiserFS (rfstools)
- Read and Write Win32 filesystems (Win32 API)
- Read FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 without using Win32
- Read and Write software RAID0, RAID1 and RAID5
- Read and Write via SFTP
- Read and Write VMWare disks
- VFS allows mounting on subdirectories
- VFS abstraction allows multiple filesystems to be supported
- VFS abstraction allows network filesystems like ftp, http and scp to be supported
- Command line interface
- Drag & Drop GUI
- Auto detect available filesystems for GUI quickstart
Planned Features of Virtual Volumes:
- More filesystems (HFS, ISO9660, NTFS, ...)
- More file based filesystems (.zip, .tgz etc)
- Accessable in native namespace to give filesystem drivers access to LVM2 and RAID
- NT Kernel driver to enable IFS to read LVM2
- Apache module to make Virtual Volumes available via WEB-DAV. This will allow Windows to assign a drive letter to Virtual Volumes.
This is beta software. Do not use it unless you have a complete backup of your computer!
Usage
The interface to Virtual Volumes is slowly being develped. A focus on reliable drag and drop means it should interact well with explorer. The command line tool still provides a test harness and allows access to all the available features. The readme.txt has usage instructions but you can get Updated Usage Information here.
