HFS+ in Linux

FirebarUK

FirebarUK

FirebarUK

Soldato
Joined
9 Dec 2004
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Hi all,

I've got a USB disk that I need to read/write to in Linux. Its formatted with hfs+ as it was originally connected to a mac.

I've got it mounted and can read, but need to write. Is there anything I need to watch out for, I don't want to bugger any permissions up. I presume I could just chmod 777 it all? Then add an entry into fstab to allow rw?

If anyone has done anything similar, whats the best way to allow global/read-write.
 
IIRC HFS support under linux is pretty mature (not perfect though, I think there is still problems with journalled HFS+ volumes). It should work transparently provided you have full support compiled into your kernel.
Personally though, I would be severely tempted to read the data off and reformat as a fat32 volume. That way it should be readable and writable on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X :)
 
Thanks for your reply.

In the end due to having no windows machine's I've formatted some as hfs+ (to back up mac) and some as ext3.
 
FirebarUK said:
Thanks for your reply.

In the end due to having no windows machine's I've formatted some as hfs+ (to back up mac) and some as ext3.
Click to expand...

You can format fat32 from linux
 
Yep I know, just its a mahoooosive disk (600GB) and I didn't fancy lots of primary & extended partitions. In the end as I don't use Windows it should be fine :)

Thanks for your help guys.
 
Here's a mostly-related question. In the OS X disk unility you have the opportunity of formatting to "UNIX File System." What file system is this? ext3? ext2? Would either of these be a viable alternative for Mr. Firebar?
 
I've been trying this today. I have no idea, but whenever HFS then goes on after, Linux complains and can't read the partitions. Its v. strange.
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Here's a mostly-related question. In the OS X disk unility you have the opportunity of formatting to "UNIX File System." What file system is this? ext3? ext2? Would either of these be a viable alternative for Mr. Firebar?
Click to expand...


It's the UFS file system :)

"Linux's ext2/3 and Reiser, for example, are not supported, although you can find an open source implementation of ext2 for Mac OS X (http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/).

Interestingly, BootX, the Mac OS X bootloader, does understand the ext2 filesystem, and can load kernels from it."
 
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Yeah found that utility but obviously requires all mac's the disk will be plugged into to have the app.

Found out it was UFS too, hrrrm :D

In the end I just opted to create a huge FAT partition, seems do-able under Linux/Unix/Mac and Windows understands it fine. I thought Windows didn't like FAT32 partitions over 32GB?
 
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