Re: [9fans] How to read fossil+venti partition without venti

["Steve Simon" <steve@quintile.net>]

Once you have run fossil with venti and it has done its first snap -a,
which is usually done after the first fossil+venti boot, you can now
never run fossil without venti. Fossil now contains only the files
which have changed since the last snap -a. All other files which have
not changed WRT the snap are reprisented by pointers (scores) into
the venti archive; This is fundamental to how fossil and venti work.

What you can do is run venti without fossil and extract your data from
there (using vacfs) provided you can get a score which reprisents the
root of the filesystem you are after (use fossil/last on your fossil
partition).

You can also completely repopulate your fossil as of the time of that
last snap -a losing only the changes between the snap -a and the time
your system crashed.

I wrote a "hold your hand" document, primarily for my own use, which
describes rebuilding a working system from only the venti arenas.

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/contrib/steve/doc/Venti-rescue.pdf

I strongly suggest you print out the fossil and venti papers and manual
pages and read them carefully.

-Steve