e2tools is a simple set of GPL'ed utilities to read, write, and manipulate files in an ext2/ext3 filesystem. These utilities access a filesystem directly using the ext2fs library. I wrote these tools in order to copy files into a linux filesystem on a machine that does not have ext2 support. Of course, they can also be used on a Linux machine to read/write to disk images or floppies without having to mount them or have root access.

Supported functionality:

• copy files: e2cp
• move files: e2mv
• remove files: e2rm
• create directory: e2mkdir
• create hard links: e2ln
• list files/directories: e2ls
• output the last part of a file: e2tail

Requirements:

• e2fsprogs-1.27 or later - http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/
• gcc - e2fsprogs will not compile with some proprietary compilers (ie SCO's)

For questions, suggestions, or remarks please open an issue at

 https://github.com/e2tools/e2tools/issues

For patches, please create a pull request at

 https://github.com/e2tools/e2tools/pulls

or open an issue with a patch attached.

In general, to specify a directory or file on an ext2 filesystem for the e2tools utilities, use the following form:

filesystem:directory_path

The filesystem can be an unmounted partition or a regular file that's been formatted to contain an ext2 filesystem. In general, if a command takes multiple file names on the command line, if the first one contains an ext2 file specification, the rest of the files are assumed to be on the same filesystem until another one is explicitly stated:

/tmp/boot.img:/tmp/file1 /tmp/file2 /tmp/file3 /tmp/boot2.img:/tmp/file4

Files 1-3 are on /tmp/boot.img and the last file is on /tmp/boot2.img

A few quick ideas:

# create 16MB image file
dd if=/dev/null of=test.img bs=1 count=1 seek=16M

# create filesystem inside image file
mkfs.ext2 -F test.img

# create directory foo in root directory of filesystem image
e2mkdir test.img:/foo

# look into root directory of filesystem image
e2ls -l test.img:

# copy README.md into foo dir
e2cp README.md test.img:/foo

# look what is inside the foo dir
e2ls -l test.img:/foo

# remove file again
e2rm test.img:/foo/README.md

There is more than one way to access an ext2 filesystem. We list a few here with a few remarks on each:

• Linux kernel ext2 driver. Requires loopback (for image files) and mounting privileges. Also requires the filesystem block size to not be larger than the kernel PAGE_SIZE.

• fuse2fs FUSE userspace ext2 driver from e2fsprogs. Requires mounting privileges. e2fsprogs handles any filesystem block size independent of the kernel PAGE_SIZE.

• e2tools. Uses the same codebase from e2fsprogs, and thus handles any filesystem block size independent of the kernel PAGE_SIZE. Does not require mounting privileges.

The repology.org e2tools page contains information on many distributions' e2tools packages including the releases they are packaging.