[plug] CD Audio FileSystem

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Wed, 31 Mar 1999, Trevor Phillips wrote:
> Anything like this for Linux? A virtual Filesystem so you can directly
> read Audio tracks instead of needing to rip them with a separate ripper
> before processing them (playing, mp3ing, etc...)
> Can Linux do things like this easily? I know it has its /proc custom
> file-system, but is it possible (and has it been done) for 3rd-party
> extensions. (Maybe as Kernel modules?)
Linux can do these things very easily. Writing a filesystem driver for
Linux is actually reasonably straightforward - since you don't have to
play directly with hardware - but the interface has changed significantly
between 2.0 and 2.2, and the docs are not quite right yet.
This is actually a project I have been intended to do once I get a
soundcard. 'Til then, the testing will be too difficult.
If you are a good C programmer, you could probably do it yourself in a
week or two once you understand the kernel filesystem code.

> On a side-note, is there a filesystem which is a cross between UMSDOS
> and VFAT yet? Any plans? It'd be handy to access long filenames that
> Windoze could also read, yet still do file permissions and such if you
> wanted...
Unix filesystems and VFAT have slightly different character sets for
filenames. As an example, one cannot use a filename containing the '\'
character on a VFAT filesystem. Also, VFAT is only halfway
case-insensitive, which would cause other problems. There's not a great
deal to be gained from seating UMSDOS on VFAT as opposed to FAT, but if
you want partial long-filename support it would be fairly easy to write
it.

-Greg Mildenhall