Refuse a directory whose last entries cannot be named as a parent

A parent is an entry index PLUS ONE in two bytes, so entry 65535 has no
parent number: adding one wraps to zero, and zero is the root. Eight
entries to a block, so 8192 directory blocks reaches it and SplitDisk
formatted that happily.

It does not fail by refusing, which is why it was worth chasing rather than
reasoning about. Reproduced on a disk built for it: mkdir /deep/child, with
/deep at entry 65535, printed 'Made "/deep/child" as entry 0' and put child
in the ROOT. Listing /deep then showed nothing, because the search is for a
parent of 65536 and the entry carries zero - so the same mkdir succeeded
again, and again, and five entries called /child piled up in the root.
Duplicate names in one directory are the one thing rename refuses outright,
on the grounds that a search answers with whichever it meets first and the
rest can never be reached; this manufactured them one per attempt.

8191 blocks is the most, giving 65528 entries. Refused when formatting and
again when reading, in both implementations, because a disk claiming more
was made by something that never checked. On the machine only the high byte
of the count has to be looked at: anything from 0x20 up is too many.

Three checks, all of which fail with their guard removed. The machine's
disk claims the size rather than having it, so the test image is 64 blocks
that lie rather than sixteen megabytes that do not - mounting is refused at
the geometry, which is read out of block 0.
This commit is contained in:
Anachronaut
2026-08-25 23:47:02 -04:00
parent 634650cab9
commit ce0f18f4ef
9 changed files with 129 additions and 1 deletions
+17
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@@ -237,6 +237,23 @@ because it is the only thing that makes the difference between them real. A disk
readable by anything that has never heard of a directory right up until it actually has
one.
**A disk may have at most 8,191 directory blocks**, which is 65,528 entries, and that
number comes from the parent field rather than from anything about size. A parent is an
index *plus one* in two bytes, so entry 65,535 has no parent number at all: adding one
wraps to zero, and zero means the root.
The failure is worth describing, because it is the shape of failure this format has to
watch for. Such an entry does not refuse what is put inside it. It writes a parent of zero
and the thing lands in **the root**, while whatever asked is told it went where it asked
for. Looking in that directory afterwards finds nothing, because the search is for a
parent the entry does not carry - so the same create succeeds again, and again, filling
the root with entries of one name. Two entries of one name in one directory is precisely
what `rename` refuses on the grounds that a search answers with whichever it meets first
and the rest can never be reached again; this made them by the handful, one per attempt.
Both implementations refuse to format past the bound, and refuse to read a disk that
claims it - because a disk claiming it was made by something that never checked.
Four things are refused, and each refusal is the reason a separate command exists:
**`rmdir` will not take a file and `delete` will not take a directory.** Neither can be