using ext2 and or ext3 filesystems from OS X

By dtlussier at Tue, Oct 13 2009 12:06am |

I am trying to share existing data with a Linux system which is currently on an ext3 formatted external harddrive.

Having looked into the issue I found the MacFuse project which looks to point towards a way to solve the problem, but have seen some scary posts about ext2 and ext3 FUSE libraries which I might use.

I'm wondering if anyone has success or advice in using ext2 or ext3 filesystems through the MacFuse project that is more up to date than some of the forum/email list posts that I was able to find online.

Many thanks!

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Tue, 2009-10-13 11:40 — steja

Fuse and ext2/ext3

I have no experience with ext2 and Fuse - last time I looked into the topic (almost two years ago), ext2 support on OSX via Fuse was still a bit too scary for production use (at least for my taste). But I am regularly using an NTFS-formatted external harddrive to share data between Linux and OSX (with Fuse+NTFS on the Mac side). So far, it did work without any problems. If reformatting the drive is an option, you might consider using NTFS.

Tue, 2009-10-13 13:44 — dtlussier

Ok - that's good to know.

Ok - that's good to know. As it stands I have a fair bit of data on ext3 disks which I'd like to avoid moving around.

Any other ext2/ext3 + FUSE experience out there?

Tue, 2009-10-13 15:17 — ptg21

Mac Fuse works fine with reading the ext3 formatted drives

but I've no experience in writing to ext3 using OSX. I could be wrong (I am mostly wrong) but I think it may be disabled so that it avoids possibly corrupting the ext3 journal

Wed, 2009-10-14 11:41 — vasi

MacFuse works, but it's

MacFuse works, but it's pretty slow, and write support is very experimental. I'd recommend it only for occasional use, with data you can afford to lose (ie: backed up). Other options are:

1. If you just need to transfer data occasionally (or just once), you can boot into a Linux liveCD and transfer the data from there. Linux has perfectly good support for the Mac filesystem, HFS+, as long as you turn journalling off--you can turn it back on once the data is transferred. Or, you can use a FAT32 (aka "MS-DOS") partition/disk as an intermediate that both OS X and Linux can read from and write to.

2. If you need more regular access, you can use a virtual machine. Use VMWare/Parallels/VirtualBox with a Linux guest, and then share between the VM and OS X using shared folders, or a network filesystem (SSHFS, FTP, NFS...).

Wed, 2009-10-14 13:25 — pmolfese

I just use SSH

I just use SSH/SFTP to transfer the files back and forth. It's also pretty easy to write a script on your mac to automatically sync the folders (or you can use RSync).