Apple HFS / HFS+ File-System Support Seeing Many Fixes For Linux 7.1
Nearly one year ago to the day I noted Linux developers were considering the removal of the Apple HFS and HFS+ file-system drivers from the kernel. They were orphaned the past decade and turning into a maintenance burden for upstream developers. But then to some surprise, a few developers stepped up to maintain the HFS(+) drivers. One year later it's proving to be a success story with more fixes for this aging Apple file-system support continuing.
After developers last year stepped up to maintain the HFS/HFS+ drivers so they could remain in the mainline kernel, we've been seeing an assortment of fixes almost each kernel cycle. With Linux 7.1 and now one year later, there is a hearty batch of fixes on the way to the mainline tree.
The HFS/HFS+ file-system driver code saw several fixes for issues raised by Syzbot. Plus some xfstests failures were also addressed. The fixes from four developers included:
All the details can be found via the HFS pull request for Linux 7.1. So with this maintenance work continuing, the Apple HFS/HFS+ file-system support is going strong in the mainline kernel even with macOS just focused on the Apple File System (APFS) these days.
After developers last year stepped up to maintain the HFS/HFS+ drivers so they could remain in the mainline kernel, we've been seeing an assortment of fixes almost each kernel cycle. With Linux 7.1 and now one year later, there is a hearty batch of fixes on the way to the mainline tree.
The HFS/HFS+ file-system driver code saw several fixes for issues raised by Syzbot. Plus some xfstests failures were also addressed. The fixes from four developers included:
"- hfsplus: fix generic/642 failure
- hfsplus: rework logic of map nodes creation in xattr b-tree
- hfsplus: fix logic of alloc/free b-tree node
- hfsplus: fix error processing issue in hfs_bmap_free()
- hfsplus: fix potential race conditions in b-tree functionality
- hfsplus: extract hidden directory search into a helper function
- hfsplus: fix held lock freed on hfsplus_fill_super()
- hfsplus: fix generic/523 test-case failure
- hfsplus: validate b-tree node 0 bitmap at mount time
- hfsplus: refactor b-tree map page access and add node-type validation
- hfsplus: fix to update ctime after rename
- hfsplus: fix generic/533 test-case failure
- hfsplus: set ctime after setxattr and removexattr
- hfsplus: fix uninit-value by validating catalog record size
- hfsplus: fix potential Allocation File corruption after fsync"
All the details can be found via the HFS pull request for Linux 7.1. So with this maintenance work continuing, the Apple HFS/HFS+ file-system support is going strong in the mainline kernel even with macOS just focused on the Apple File System (APFS) these days.