Write Support about fatx

[PotcFdk]

Just a short reminder that the XBox source code seems to be leaked - though I both see people who claim this is definitely a new thing, and also people who claim it's been around for a few years already.
Anyways, it seems to contain fatx sources, too, so maybe one day we will see good, full fatx support with modern kernels. I just hope it doesn't have to be me who will write one in 10 years. ;-)
Actually, I've tried to start a modern-day kernel module project for fatx in 2019, but soon noticed that my entire concept was flawed to the point where I had to throw it all away and re-start, but haven't had any time since then. Turns out, it's a bit more complicated than I initially assumed. Sorry to disappoint, lol.

[mborgerson]

Hi Steven--

Thanks for the detailed info! I like the ribbon cable hack.

Yes, write support is absolutely something I want but "just haven't gotten around to yet"(tm). As you suggested, this would be beneficial for a number of reasons. I would also like to have the ability to format a new Xbox HDD image from scratch (though in reality I think this part could be as simple as writing a "blank" image (with partitions formatted, just empty/free of copyright data). And we'd finally be able to ditch the XboxHDM tool.

It's probably a few days of work. I didn't need it at the time so I didn't do it, but I expect that it's not too complicated. The most difficult part is probably just allocating clusters and updating the FAT, etc. for file creation.

As always, pull requests are welcome if someone wants to do the work!

Matt

[PotcFdk]

Hello, I know this is not strictly the best place to ask, but I remember there being a 2.4-era fatx kernel driver with read-write support. Wouldn't native support by getting that old driver back to life make sense, too; or alternatively, seeing as the differences between regular fat and fatx are not inumanly big, wouldn't basing a new fatx driver off of the normal fat one ease things up a bit?

[Lantizia]

About that 2.4-era fatx driver... I mention it in the comment at the top of the script I posted above...

# The XboxHDM VM is the only known thing (compiled into the Kernel) to have read/write for FATX.

I call it a VM only because that's how I use it, but it's actually just a bunch of files you can download online and with them comes both a .sh and a .bat for creating an ISO you can boot on an old legacy IDE PC.

Apparently (if going down the kernel driver route is too big a job) there is another project called fusefat (sometimes called libfat) which is a FAT12/16/32 read/write driver for FUSE. Maybe this could be modified? According to Sourceforge it hasn't seen any work in 10 years though - probably because everyone just uses the kernel driver.

p.s. Minor update on that script I posted above... it can now use the normal copy of hdparm to lock/unlock drives over USB-IDE. So if we do get a working fatx driver (and a way of formatting fatx partitions)... then it means no longer having to rely on any more third party downloads - mostly it'll all be stuff available in our normal Linux distributions.

[mborgerson]

@PotcFdk Go for it! I'm sure you can find an existing FAT16/32 driver that can be modified to support FATX.

[Xeddius]

Definitely hoping to see progress on this. Trying to upgrade my Xbox and I don't have any systems with IDE connectors (only have an IDE-to-SATA for the SSD I'm installing in it). I've had quite a headache trying to get XboxHDM working with a sata based drive. The Virtual Machine route seemed viable using the Windows version of XboxHDM in a Win7 VM, but turned out to be more of a headache than it was worth. I'll try what Lantizia suggested with the VM to see if this might work better. Having write support directly from my main os (Linux) would save me (and many others) so much time and effort.

Since this project seems dead, I purchased a new IDE cable, y splitter, etc and just used CHIMP. I recommend this overall as I doubt proper write support will be coming anytime soon.

EDIT: It has been more than a year, I've done mods for others, I highly recommend going with the Y splitter, IDE cable, and CHIMP method, if you're thinking of using this to edit the filesystem it's a waste of time until full write support is completed (Which is probably going to be a very long time.)

[mborgerson]

Done via #14 🎉