Does anyone know if there exists a tool that can convert tarballs to filesystems and back. I know you can make a loopback device, but it can be pretty hard/impossible to do inside a container, and often requires special flags and privileges.
It's absolutely fantastic, how gracefully ext2/3/4 stood the test of time, for something designed in early 90s by people who hadn't had 30+ years of kernel hacking in their pockets (yet). While I generally prefer ZFS, ext4 remains a rock solid choice - I rarely have a reason to pick anything else (on Linux, at least).
Uses the ext4 file system --> "LUKS encryption and decryption: In the cryptsetup-laboratory with Termux (running under the Android 11 operating system), "cryptsetup reencrypt --disable-locks --type luks2", no root access, no loop device, and an unusable "mount" command.": https://old.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/18am78j/luks_encryp... (old.reddit.com/r/termux/comments/18am78j/luks_encryption_and_decryption_in_the/)
i am baffled this article used a usb stick instead of a file where it could have saved a lot of unnecessary i/o, but a good writeup. i had to implement ext4 support in something back in like 2017 and wish something like this existed
Awhile back I put together a visualization of ext4.
https://buredoranna.github.io/linux/ext4/2020/01/09/ext4-viz...