Slashdot Mirror
Sharing a Firewire Drive Between Mac and Linux?
jhealy1024 asks: "I was getting short of disk space on my iBook, so I got an external 100GB FireWire drive to expand my storage space. It works like a charm, and so my storage problems are relieved -- for now. Then I realized that my Linux server has several IEEE 1394 ports on it -- maybe I could use the drive to back up files from my Linux server as well! Unfortunately, after an afternoon of frustration, I haven't been able to do it. The problem seems to be that there are no (fully working) formats that both the Linux box and the Mac can use. HFS+ and UFS are supported by both machines, but write support on the Linux side is reportedly still in beta for both. I don't feel that I can trust it yet for backing up files. I've tried UDF, but the versions aren't compatible (Linux likes 2+, and OSX only goes to 1.5). Not to mention, Mac OS doesn't seem to like a whole block device formatted as UDF (mmm... kernel panic). The closest I got was by using FAT32 as the partition type, which does work on both machines. Unfortunately, the max file size is 4GB, which won't cut it if I use the Mac for DVD mastering or DV editing (20 minutes of video == 4+GB). I know I could just partition the drive, but I'd really just like to share files on one device (especially things like MP3s). Has anyone found a good way to share physical devices between Mac OS X and Linux?"
> (a+b)(a-b)=b(a-b) ; (a+b)= b
can't divide by (a-b) when a=b or else you'd be dividing by zero. alot of can be proven true after dividing by zero.
HFS+ support for Linux is almost non-existant. There are tools to do it, but they're kludgy. HFS (no plus) is supported, IIRC. Your best bet may be to have a separate HFS partition and use it as a temporary storage disk--mount it in OS X, copy files to it, mount it in Linux, get the files off, copy any Linux files you need in OS X to it, etc.
- Standard.
- Designed for large data sets (1 GB).
- Designed for large file transfers.
That said, UDF is usually used in DVDs and I don't know if and how a firewire drive can be formatted in UDF, but it might be worthwhile to check it out.Yeah, but *BSD is dying!
PS. Seriously, this is not a troll. Check out www.netcraft.com, who have confirmed it.
i dunno if linux has support for this emerging technology thats yet to have companies release linux drivers for but...
network the computers using the firewire..
plug the firwire drive into the linux box..
share it with samba..
mount it on OSX..
voila..
If you're running Jaguar, you may be able to get the iBook to recognize the linux machine as a router or vice versa (or fake windows filesharing using Samba and Rendevous). I've never had to work with filesizes over 4g, so FAT32 works fine for me, but you might consider transferring files over a standard ethernet connection instead, and then backing those files up from the linux machine onto the firewire drive.
It's not a perfect solution, but it could work.
- Cloud
i'm in the same boat, but with a mac & win98/2000 box.... anyone have any idea how well an OS X 10.2 box plays with a NTFS(+?) (i think) filesystem hard drive? i have yet to play w/the firewire drive and windows, as i don't want windows trying to format everything on my 100 gig drive. i'd rather not have to buy any "read mac formats on pc!" software...
any help/suggestions?
moox. for a new generation.
I run Netatalk on all my linux boxes. If you have 100 Mb EN then transfer times are OK for normal files. Set up a HFS partition and copy from the Mac to the disk plugged into your linux server.
Mac OS X should be able to see all partition types that FeeBSD can see. Linux too.
But if you are just looking at backing up some files from a linux box bzip them and scp them to the Mac running OS X... rsync is reported to work in the other direction too.
realkiwi
Not the best solution but a solution never the less would be two partitions on the disk. One parition set up as HFS+ for the DVD mastering since you require support for large files and another as a FAT32 for sharing of files between the Mac and Linux systems.
Since you didn't mention DVD mastering on the Linux box I'll assume you don't do that. HFS+ read support is support under linux (write support has a warning of being dangerous the last time I compiled a kernel). If required you could still back up the large files from the DVD mastering partition to the Linux machine - you just couldn't safely write them back (you could use something like sftp, or rsync to copy them over an network connection if required later on).
It's been a while since I submitted this article, so I'll bring you guys up to speed on my other attempts:
While I appreciate the two-partition suggestions, they're not quite what I'm looking for, as I don't want to split the disk in half for the two different machines. The "transfer partition" (a small partition in HFS that both machines can read) idea is a good one, but when I get to that point it's easier to just network the machines together and copy the files rather than waste the disk space.
On that front, I've tried NFS and Samba between the linux box and the ibook, without much success. I suspect it may have to do with large file support on the linux side.
The NFS mount works okay, but then randomly craps out (I get read errors) on large files. I've tried tuning the NFS connection params (different version numbers, TCP/UDP, buffer sizes) without much luck.
With Samba, I'm smacking into the large file size limit on linux. I wanted to try an SMB mount from the linux to the ibook. The ibook seems to be exporting the full sizes on the files, but the linux size can't see files over 2GB. I've recompiled Samba on both, but that didn't help. Therefore, I think I need to patch my kernel for large file support in SMBfs and try again.
I just bought Jaguar, so I'm hoping that I might get a little help in the new release. Also, I haven't tried AFS yet... =)
Gigabit ethernet
NFS
This would seem to be the easiest setup. and both could have rw access. then just add a simple line to the fstab and the drive would always be there.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
In spite of the hasty moderation, this is not a bad suggestion at all. Captain Pedantic was suggesting to use tar in the mode which writes directly to the disk without any filesystem. Tar has this ability primarily so that it can write to tapes, which don't have filesystems, but it can be used with any device. Since tar uses the same format on both OSes (or at least GNU tar does, which is available for both), the data should be available to both. Plus, tar works well with big files. The big drawback is that this will only work for backing up and restoring; you can't use the files directly from the disk with any program other than tar.
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
Why not just format the drive as HFS (no plus).
Does MacOSX still support it, or did Apple drop support of it?
The last time I used HFS with Linux, it was fine. Back then, there was NO HFS+ support in Linux, but apparently there is some now.
Another solution might be fat32... does MacOS have any support for it? I used to be able to use fat32 formatted zip drives way back when in classic MacOS. Unfortuantly, I don't have a mac anymore to test any of these things with.
XP forces NTFS for partitions larger than 32GB.
Mike
One approach: Use tar to create an archive in the raw partition. This is what tar was originally invented to do, though with tape device files, rather than disk device files. I suppose that's good for archiving stuff, but not much else. Do you mind copying your video files to internal disk before working on them?
Another approach: create a partition the same size as the file you want to put on the disk... Well, that could get weird.
Too strange, too complicated? Probably. Just brainstorming here.
I want to use my one FireWire HD to back up my XP laptop and my two Jaguar Macs. I don't want to use a network connection because I want to take a snapshot of the Macs' hard drives by "booting" them into Target Disk mode.
I have resigned myself to partitioning the drive, with one formatted NTFS for the XP box and one formatted as FAT32 for the Macs. I tried HFS+, but for some reason my Mac can't successfully format a partition created from the PC, and the PC can't even see partitions created on my Mac. The only thing that seems to work is to partition it on the PC and format as FAT32.
Then I run into the 4GB filesize limitation. I might try to create a large virtual drive by creating a segmented disk image file. Wow, that would be ugly. But if it works . . .
Never refuse a breath mint.
There's slight catch: Tar doesn't honor resource forks, so you wouldn't want to put anything in a tar ball with a resource fork (i.e, a Carbon app). But for regular files, yes, it's fine.
Since we have full control over Linux code, one could revert back to the UDF 1.5 implementation for Linux, to match the version in OS X. Then suggest that Apple update to the newer version of UDF as OS X evolves.
Rob, you listening? What purpose do IMPs serve? Aside from destroying the credibility of the moderation system, that is.
I do want to disagree with Captain Pendantic (hey, I'm sometimes known as Lord of the Nitpicks, I guess we haven't met) on one point. The moderation system is not a system of rewards and punishments. It's a filtering system. Of course, in this case, it failed as a filtering system, by removing extremely relevent comments from the discussion.
I'm dumping IRIX, Unicos, QNX and VMS!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Bit late to reply, maybe, but "The moderation system is not a system of rewards and punishments. It's a filtering system"
You tell that to the people who have a +1 posting bonus, or to those who can only post twice a day.
Also, moderation should only ever be done at -1, oldest first. With no influence from the friends and foes crap, and if at all possible, anonymously. If a comment is going to be moderated up or down, let it be done so, soley on its content, not the author.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The Jaguar Samba implemention is fine for non-routed networks. However, browsing only works on local subnets. If you try to add a WINS server to cross subnets you can only browse the WINS server itself. For some reason, this is not big news, even though Apple heavily touted SMB browsing as a Jaguar feature. They seem to be dragging their feet on a fix, although they document it dep inside this technote.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin