OSDev.org

Hello everybody!

I registered so that I could update some information on one of the pages in the Wiki, but I couldn't figure out how to get access.

Background story:
I have replicated the file system of the Amiga, OFS and FFS for use in a project I am in the process of making, and there is so much inaccurate information out there. Including in this Wiki.

My project is currently parsing OFS and FFS, ('DOS\0', and 'DOS\1') Boot ID, yet there is still a whole lot of testing to make sure it is robust. Let us say the project will be a valuable tool for data archaeology on anything Amiga, although my plans are bigger than that.

Currently it is giving me the whole file structure and any file for which I am asking to get the binary data, like you specify a root directory on your host operating system, and it will automatically go through any and all files and sub content of any image files to do analysis on the data.

That is not the relevant part, though...

I was planning to make some updates to the page about FFS, since there are some inaccuracies there.

First one is that the page title is FFS, but it really only documents OFS (mostly). The page title should stay, but I would just add something about what actually is the difference between OFS and FFS in a fitting location.

Two major things that needs to be updated:
OFS data blocks DO have the data structure as listed. FFS data block DO NOT have any metadata at all, so the information does not really cover FFS. In FFS data blocks, there is only data.

That means that the NEXT_DATA_BLOCK field is not existing like it is on OFS, so you can't follow a linked list to rebuild the binary file. The checksum is also not there, so FFS is not as robust as OFS

In FFS, you will have to use the block table that is given in the file block, with possible extension blocks to rebuild the binary file, and the order is read backwards through the table of blocks. There is a block count there as well as a file size, that I don't think was documented.

Thank You.

I tried to quote, but got this error:

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General Error
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An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.


Thank you for your info. I could edit the wiki now.

RoyGal wrote:'\xF0\x9F\x98\x83'

The forum software doesn't support emoji. (I'm sure it would be easy enough to switch the database encoding from utf8 to utf8mb4, but I don't know if that's the only thing that would need to change.)

So my issue is regarding editing access in general, but I thought I'd post it here since the title fits. I've joined the wiki group but I can't log in. When I try, it says "incorrect password". I've changed my password but that still shouldn't matter if both are linked.

You can't log in if your password has certain special characters in it. I don't have a list of which ones, though.

Octocontrabass wrote:You can't log in if your password has certain special characters in it. I don't have a list of which ones, though.

You mean it's 2021 and we still can't do umlauts? Embarrassing.

nullplan wrote:

Octocontrabass wrote:You can't log in if your password has certain special characters in it. I don't have a list of which ones, though.

You mean it's 2021 and we still can't do umlauts? Embarrassing.

No, as far as the wiki software is concerned, it is 2008, as that is when the version of Mediawiki (1.12, according to the wiki itself) being used was developed.

The same applies to the forum, BTW, which is using PHPBB 3.0, which dates from 2007.

We've had many, many discussions about updating or replacing the forum, but nothing has ever come of it. Aside from the endless disagreements on the topic and a lack of consensus on what to do, Chase has shown little if any interest in changing anything (he did discuss switching to Discourse a few years ago, but there was a lot of pushback in any case).

AFAIK, no one has discussed updating the Wiki software before, but I imagine that the result would be the same as with the forum.

Schol-R-LEA wrote:No, as far as the wiki software is concerned, it is 2008, as that is when the version of Mediawiki (1.12, according to the wiki itself) being used was developed.

Even for 2008, not having support for all Unicode characters is embarrassing. Unicode 1.0 was released in 1995 if memory serves, i.e. before I even entered primary school. 2008 was the year I graduated high school and entered University (having successfully ducked out of military service). Just for reference what timespans we are talking about.

nullplan wrote:

Schol-R-LEA wrote:No, as far as the wiki software is concerned, it is 2008, as that is when the version of Mediawiki (1.12, according to the wiki itself) being used was developed.

Even for 2008, not having support for all Unicode characters is embarrassing. Unicode 1.0 was released in 1995 if memory serves, [...]

You aren't wrong, though the sad fact is that Unicode support in web-based forum software was still the exception at the time, not the rule. The move away from basic ASCII support was shamefully slow for much of the web.