The Design And Implementations Of EXT2 File System Driver On UEFI

UEFI is the next-generation BIOS technology proposed by Intel Company. It defines the interface between the operating system and the platform firmware. It is a standard without implementation that released by UEFI Forum, the implementation about this standard should be provided by other company or open-source organization. Implementations that following UEFI standard can be compatible with others whether its’ same or not. UEFI has lots of advantages, such as cross-platform compatibility, scalability based on loading driver dynamically and high performance based on asynchronous mode, by these advantages, UEFI BIOS developing rapidly and has been pre-loaded on many equipments as the next generation BIOS by well-known major manufacturers.UEFI pre-boot environment is known as a temporary system, it already is a operating system, there is a large number of applications that running on the operating system have been transplanted to UEFI environment. But applications in pre-boot environment only can access to FAT partitions. In order to increase the diversity of applications in UEFI pre-boot environment, this study exploring the UEFI BIOS platform, analyzing the structure of the EXT2 file system in Linux operating system, and proposing the design of EXT2 file system driver on UEFI according to the characteristics of EXT2 file system. This design adding EXT2 file system to BIOS which is conforming to UEFI specification according to the description of file system in UEFI specification, explaining the method of implementation about EXT2 file system driver on UEFI in the form of UEFI driver, and implementing protocols of file system module by abstracting EXT2 file system to make applications in UEFI can operating file in EXT2-format external memory, implementing the supporting of UEFI pre-boot environment to EXT2 file systems.