Whats this for a block?

[Stephen C. Tweedie]

Hi,

On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 19:46 +0200, Niki Hammler wrote:

> I have got a question concerning directory entries. I have the following 
> block containing exactly the filenames I had in one specified folder on 
> the same file system:
> 
> http://www.sbox.tugraz.at/home/n/nobaq/ext2.dat
> 
> I really hoped that this is an directory block which could point me to 
> the inode of the files.

Yes, it is.

> But when I try to extract the data, I only get garbage. I'm reading the 
> block this way: First 4 bytes are pointer to inode, second 4 bytes are 
> length of the name and the the rest is the name itself and so on.

Not quite.  It's an ext2_dir_entry_2 struct from
linux/include/linux/ext2_fs.h :

        struct ext2_dir_entry_2 {
        	__le32	inode;			/* Inode number */
        	__le16	rec_len;		/* Directory entry length */
        	__u8	name_len;		/* Name length */
        	__u8	file_type;
        	char	name[EXT2_NAME_LEN];	/* File name */
        };
        
so yes, the first 4 bytes are the inode number; but then you've got a 2-
byte record length, which includes the 8 byte directory entry struct
plus the name length rounded up to the next 4 bytes (to keep the entries
4-byte aligned on disk); then the name length itself, and the inode
type, both of them just 1 byte long.

> The first two entries should be '.' and '..', so the name lengths should 
> be only 1 and 2, shouldn't they?

They are: looking at the "hexdump -C" of the data, I see

00000000  01 40 01 00 0c 00 01 02  2e 00 00 00 b6 c1 08 00  |. at ..............|
00000010  0c 00 02 02 2e 2e 00 00  02 40 01 00 14 00 09 01  |......... at ......|

so you've got inode number 0x00014001, then 0x000c = 12 bytes record
length, then a 1-byte name and file_type 2, EXT2_FT_DIR; then "." for
the name.  That completes the first record.  Then you have inode
0x0008c1b6, record length 12, name length 2 and file_type 2, for the
name "..".  And so on.

Cheers,
 Stephen