ext2fs

node-ext2fs

WASM bindings to the linux ext{2,3,4} filesystem library

node-ext2fs uses the e2fsprogs project to provide access to ext filesystem from javascript.

The node- in node-ext2fs is here because it was a native node module until v3.0.0 (excluded). Since v3.0.0, it is a WebAssembly module built with emscripten.

Some things you can do with this module:

• Read/write files in a filesystem image directly without mounting
• Use familiar APIs, node-ext2fs has the exact same interface as node's fs module
• Combine node-ext2fs filesystem streams with host filesystem streams (e.g copy files)
• Create a tar archive from a filesystem image
• Perform a TRIM operation to obtain discard regions of a filesystem

Installation

Simply install node-ext2fs using npm:

$ npm install node-ext2fs

Building

To build node-ext2fs you need to have make and emcc from emscripten >= 2.0.7 available on your environment.

Build node-ext2fs using npm:

$ npm run build

Usage

Mount a disk image and use the returned fs object. The fs returned object behaves like node's fs except it doesn't provide any xxxxSync method. You can also issue DISCARD requests using the fs async trim() method.

See the example below.

Example

const { withMountedDisk } = require('ext2fs');
const { FileDisk, withOpenFile } = require('file-disk');
const { promisify } = require('util');

async function main() {
	const diskImage = '/some/disk.image';
	const offset = 272629760;  // offset of the ext partition you want to mount in that disk image
        try {
                await withOpenFile(diskImage, 'r', async (handle) => {
                        const disk = new FileDisk(handle);
                        await withMountedDisk(disk, offset, async (fs) => {
                                const readdir = promisify(fs.readdir);
				// List files
                                console.log('readdir', await readdir('/'));
                                await fs.trim();
				// Show discarded regions
                                console.log('discarded', disk.getDiscardedChunks());
				// Show ranges of useful data aligned to 1MiB
                                console.log('ranges', await disk.getRanges(1024 ** 2));
                        });
                });
        } catch (error) {
                console.error(error);
        }
}

Support

If you're having any problems, please raise an issue on GitHub.

License

node-ext2fs is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the license.

Changelog

v3.1.1

(2022-07-07)

• add lstat support [Zane Hitchcox]