Kernsafe Virtual Disk Driver

Kernsafe has a FREEWARE app, called Total Mounter:
http://www.kernsafe.com/Default.aspx
http://www.kernsafe....oduct.aspx?id=7
http://www.kernsafe.com/DownLoad.aspx
http://www.kernsafe....Mounter1.32.exe
which includes a Virtual Disk Driver.

A very preliminary report, but it seems like this one is the "right" one : :

• ksbus.sys installs with LoadOrderGroup = Boot Bus Extender
• it appears as a FULL, SCSI miniport device, and as a "Local" disk

Nothing actually usable yet , but I do have great expectations for this one , and I feel authorized to use a single , hoping to soon be able to peruse this "walking like an Egyptian" smiley...



jaclaz

Tried to install on win7 x64 in test signing mode. It was a disaster. Hosed my system. Had to reboot to previous known good configuration.

Tried to install on win7 x64 in test signing mode. It was a disaster. Hosed my system. Had to reboot to previous known good configuration.

Well, you could try installing it on Solaris or on OSX.

It's not even "supported" in Vista or Server 2008 x64, how would you expect it to work on Windows7 x64?

http://www.kernsafe....me=Requirements

Operation System:
Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 and Microsoft Windows XP Sp1 or above
32BIT: Windows 2000 /XP/2003/VISTA.
64BIT: Windows XP x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition.


Hardware:

· 750 MHz Intel Pentium III class processor
· 256 MB of RAM
· 30 MB of disk space for application data
· Ethernet connection(for Mounting INetDisk and iSCSI)

jaclaz

Hardware:

· 256 MB of RAM

Sh??! Are drivers getting big these days!

New Virtual Disk created through the GUI and stored in new image file can be later mounted with imdisk using offset -b 32256.

Just like new image file created with Rocket Division StarWind.

Image mounted in StarWind Target as image file.

I can successfully access it with Microsoft iSCSI Initiator but not with iSCSI initiator included in KernSafe TotalMounter.

Image mounted in KernSafe iStorage Server as image file.
Can't access it neither from Microsoft iSCSI Initiator or KernSafe TotalMounter.
I probably have a wrong configuration. CHAP authentification may be mandatory.

Don't have time yet to do more checks...

Nice tool
Testing it as well.

1/
Cannot mount an iscsi image in totalmount from starwind target.
My target is fine since I can use it from starwind starport.

2/
Can mount an existing image (created with starwind target) in kernsafe.

3/
An image created with kernsafe can be opened with winimage.

4/
Kernsafe as iscsi client works fine with kernsafe target istorageserver.
Starport also works fine with kernsafe target by the way.

/Erwan

3/
An image created with kernsafe can be opened with winimage.

Sure.

But I doubt that it can be properly saved from it.

(a known problem that Winimage has with disk geometry when "exporting with a MBR")

In other words, while IMDISK "skips" the MBR and hidden sectors (BTW @bilou_gateux, newish IMDISK has the capacity to autodetect offsets) and when the contents of the image are modified simply makes the changes leaving untouched MBR and hidden sectors, Winimage "ignores" it, and works with an image MBR and hidden sectors "stripped off": thus once you have made changes to the opened images it offers to either save the image as a partition image (with no MBR and hidden sectors) or to "Export it with a MBR".
In the first case the image cannot be re-mounted properly as a "hard disk" (but of course it works allright with IMDISK) in the second case the MBR code, geometry data and Disk Signature won't be the same as before.



jaclaz

Thanks for the tip!

Indeed, I always prefer to mount my image to modify it.
ImDisk or starport+starwind are my preferred tools today.

This new kernsafe sounds promising as well.
I just would like to have the iscsi part run as well but it looks faulty (or maybe it runs only with kernsafe solutions).

/Erwan