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Plethora of New User Space Filesystems For Mac OS X
DaringDan writes "As part of the recent MacFUSE 2.0 release Amit Singh has added support for an insane number of filesystems on the Mac. This video from Google and this blog post pretty much explain everything in detail but to sum-up Singh has written a new filesystem called AncientFS which lets you mount a ton of UNIX file formats starting from the very first version of UNIX. Even more interesting is that they have also taken Linux kernel implementations of filesystems like ufs, sysv-fs, minix-fs and made them work in user-space on the Mac, which means its now possible to read disks from OSes like FreeBSD, Solaris and NeXT on OS X. ext2/ext3 don't seem to be on the list but apparently the source for everything is provided, so hopefully some enterprising soul can apply the same techniques to ext2. One of their demos even has the old UNIX kernel compiled directly on the Mac through the original PDP C compiler by somehow executing the PDP binaries on OS X!"
What is needed is an ext3 implementation. There've been projects to bring ext2/3 to the Mac, but so far they've been incomplete and abandoned.
I'm actually pretty surprised that this hasn't been properly implemented already.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Because slashdot isn't a public service announcement system and macfuse is more interesting?
FUSE is interesting and nerdy. Scaremongering about how an operating system update may not work as advertised isn't particularly interesting, even if it is indicative of a QA failure on the part of the vendor.
I searched on that phrase and found a note on Apple's site with a Last Modified date of October 30, 2008: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1545
Heck, here's one that makes reference to Mac OS 9 and OS X 10.2.4: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411
Doesn't sound like it's even remotely new, yet alone being new news.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'd say that what's interesting and what's not interesting is all a matter of opinion, but it stands to reason that if you own a Mac and would be interested in this software, you would also be interested in knowing that a recently released update from Apple is causing major system trouble.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Some users installing third party apps that modify their system files, and then apply updates over them have issues is hardly newsworthy.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
If by "works" you mean "i have a 10.3 panther PPC machine and need non-journaling access to an ext3 partition", or "i have a tiger/leopard Intel machine and don't care if my machine suddenly panics". Those are the choices at the moment.
It's curious really, this is a filesystem for which the spec is very well known, implementations are available fully open source, and yet here we are with unmaintained and unstable projects that are alpha quality for both OS X and Windows. The drivers for Windows ext2/3 support cause bluescreens under various conditions, so yea those are alpha too.
External hard drives, for one. I have some external drives I use on Linux boxes for various things. All of these boxes are up in an air conditioned server room. On occasion I need to get one file off onto my workstation, which is a Mac. Currently I have to walk it up to server room, connect it up, go back down, shell into the machine and mount it (if it's not an automounted drive), then somehow get the file out of the linux box to my Mac (scp or something). If I could just mount it on my workstation, it would save a lot of time.
Additionally, there are occasions where a recovery process needs to be run on a bad drive. The same procedure applies. It's mainly a convenience thing, but it would make the Mac into a much more useful tool for admins. I can definitely see the usefulness for FAT/NTFS in a desktop support environment.
Naturally you can always comment "Why use a Mac in the first place when you could have a linux desktop?" but I would reply that I don't have a choice, the CEO only buys Macs for workstations. So I have to use what I've got. This would make my life easier.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
How is this news while the Mac Blue Screen problem upon upgrade thing isn't mentioned anywhere on the front page? (It was news on other sites yesterday.)
Maybe because it is not widespread? Because it might be caused by hardware failures or installed third-party software that most people do not have installed?
I did not have any problems with the 10.5.6 update other than having to reinstall my Cepstral Voices.
Slashdot reports on useful software for OS X: "What the hell? Why aren't you paying attention to $RANDOM_BUG_AFFECTING_1%_OF_MAC_USERS."
Slashdot reports on a random bug in the Linux kernel: "What the hell? Why aren't you reporting on all the great free software for Linux? Are you trying to give people the wrong idea?"
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
You most certainly can if you want to. But if you have system files A and B and you modify B and later system update modifies A to call something in B that you changed the behavior of, then don't blame the system update.
That's all I'm saying.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
From a geek standpoint, one is a cool project and the other a mundane bit of troubleshooting.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
you mean BARELY causing? I am sorry but a hundred or so postings when there are over a million OS 10.5 users out there is NOT in my mind major trouble.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
As such, this means FUSE is less reliable, poorly documented, MUCH harder to use, and is chock full of bugs.
OS X is proof positive that closed source is superior to open source in every way.
This isn't a Windows news site either, yet we get tons of stories about Windows Update failures and Windows exploits.
Your argument is weak, grasshopper.
Your brain is not a computer.
I've seen plenty of stories where Joe hacked this, or John hacked that or Larry came up with this ingenious hack. But since when is slashdot concerned with the details of said hack?
If your news story is "If you hack your Mac OS X system files and then upgrade, you'll get a blue screen," then that's not news on slashdot. Anyone crowd who is "linux-heavy" should know this and go "duh!", and anyone who is not in that crowd has no idea what that means anyway.
The news here is not that exists but the details of what a proper OS X hacker might do to avoid getting the blue screen. That type of information properly belongs on a hacker website properly formatted and dedicated to handle this type of information. Slashdot's never handled that kind of hacker detail and I don't believe they intend to, nor should they.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
How is executing PDP binaries on OSX related to filesystems?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Someone makes a filesystem in the 70s, and then 30 years later is still accessible...I don't think that's gonna be the case with Windows in 30 years in the future!