DITo - Disk Image Tools

A c static library and a set of tools to handle disk image files of various file formats.

Installing

make
make install

In OSX with Homebrew

make
make install-homebrew

Path format

The tools may require a path to a file or directory in an image file as argument(s). The paths are given in the following format:

filesystem:imagefile:partition:path

filesystem is the filesystem in use. This far, ext2 and fat are the only implemented options (only FAT12). imagefile is the path to your disk image file. partition is the partition number you want. 1-4. path is the path to the file from the root of the filesystem.

Examples

ext2:imagefile.img:1:/boot/grub.conf

ext2:codedrives.img:4:/src/main.c

The tools

The following tools are implemented this far. Support for ext2 only.

dito-generate

dito-generate imagefile size1 [size2] [size3] [size4]

Creates a hard drive image file with partition sizes as close to size1..4 as possible. Sizes are in bytes but can be given with suffixes e.g. 20M to create a partition with size 20 Mb. The first partition is set as primary.

dito-extract

dito-extract imagefile:partition output

Extracts one partition from a hard drive image file to a separate file.

dito-format

dito-format imagefile:partition filesystem

Formats a partition of the image file with a filesystem. Valid file system choices for now are:

ext2

dito-ls

dito-ls [-l] <path>

Show directory listing.

dito-mkdir

dito-mkdir <path>

Creates an empty directory.

dito-cp

dito-cp <source_path> <target_path>

Copies a file. <source_path> and/or <target_path> can be replaced by paths to local files to copy files into or out of image files. Example:

dito-cp directory/myfile.txt ext2:image.img:1:/path/to/dest.txt

dito-cp ext2:image.img:1:/datefile.dat output_data.dat

Either could also be replaces by a dash - to read from or write to stdin or stdout respectively. Example:

dito-cp ext2:image.img:1:/essay.txt - | wc -l

ls -l | dito-cp - ext2:image.img:1:/directory_listing.txt

dito-rm

dito-rm <path>

Removes (unlinks) a file. Does not work for directories.

diro-rmdir

dito-rmdir <path>

Removes (unlinks) a directory, The directory must be empty.

Important note

This software is provided as-is and I will take no responsibility for any damage or data loss caused by them. I do not guarantee backwards compatibility in future updates.

Why use these tool

I created these tools for two reasons.

The first was that I wanted to learn more about filesystems in general and ext2 in particular.

The second was that I needed a tool for editing ext2 disk images for my osdev project.

Why not loopback? I'm on a mac. No loopback devices. Doesn't support ext2.

Why not native mounting? I'm on a mac. Doesn't support ext2. Also horribly convoluted to do from a shell script. Also osx adds those darned .DS_store files everywhere.

Why not osxfuse? Makes my computer freeze up irrevokably. Don't know why.