Final Year Project: Using Linux Filesystems Under Windows   Chris Bryden BEng. Electronics and Software Engineering    School of Computer Science   University of Birmingham 64 15.  Appendix C: 16.  Plan of Action as of 5^th October 1997 16.1  Approach The  first  objective  is  to  produce  the  windows  library  containing  all    the functions  necessary  to  read  the  ext2  partition.  Reading  the  disk  takes  priority over writing to the disk and this will be the first objective. Constructing functions to  perform  file  writes  to  the  ext2  partition  is  a  secondary  objective  and  its feasibility in the given time span will be gauged on further research.     16.2  October 1997 · =Research BIOS routines for reading disks not normally visible to DOS. Borland C++  4.5  has  functions  provided  in  bios.h  for  achieving  this  from  a  DOS application,  but  they  are  not  portable  to  Windows  applications.  The  desired aim  is  the  construction  of  a  function  to  read  or  write  data  to  a  specified physical sector on a fixed disk.   · =Research  the  structure  of  partition  tables  for  fixed  disks  with  the  aim  of constructing a function to return the location of an ext2 partition. · =Research the structure of the ext2 filesystem. The aim of this is to produce a set  of  functions  to  read  the  directory  structure  of  the  filesystem,  return  the physical locations on the disk that a specified file occupies, return the location of free blocks on the disk, determine disk free space values and perform the housekeeping tasks involved in writing to the disk.       16.3  November and December 1997 · =Produce   working   library   functions   to   perform   the   operations   researched above. The objective is to produce at least a library capable of performing the functions necessary to read the ext2 filesystem by the beginning of the second semester. Reassess the viability of creating an application capable of writing to the Linux filesystem. · =Running  alongside  the  development  of  the  library,  test  programs  will  be developed in VB to aid in the development of the library. 16.4  January and February 1998 · =Wind up work on the library file and design and construct the user interface for the application. Project completion is aimed for Easter 1998.