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?"
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.