Mac OS X hacks

These are just a few tricks that made my life incredibly easier when transitioning from a Ubuntu Linux machine to working on a Mac desktop computer.

Mounting ext2/ext3 volumes

This was useful for getting my backups to be read-write-able in my Mac. This is taken from the notes that Uditha Atukorala wrote for the WireFrame

1. Install MacFUSE

If you haven not already installed it download and install MacFUSE.

2. Install FUSE - Ext2

Once you have MacFUSE download and install fuse-ext2. Even though it says fuse-ext2, this one package gives both ext2 and ext3 read-write support.

After installation you should see both MacFUSE and fuse-ext2 icons in System Preferences. You now have support for ext2 and ext3 file systems. When you plug in an external ext2/ext3 partition it should automatically show up in Finder, mounted and ready to use.

If auto-mount is not giving you read/write access to ext2/ext3 partitions then you will have to edit the auto-mount script for fuse-ext2 which can be found at /System/Library/Filesystems/fuse-ext2.fs/fuse-ext2.util.

$ sudo vi -c /System/Library/Filesystems/fuse-ext2.fs/fuse-ext2.util

Around line 207 (in function Mount ()) you will find the line OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions". Change that line to read as OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions,rw+".

...
function Mount ()
{
    LogDebug "[Mount] Entering function Mount..."
    # Setting both defer_auth and defer_permissions. The option was renamed
    # starting with MacFUSE 1.0.0, and there seems to be no backward
    # compatibility on the options.
    # OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions"
    OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions,rw+"

    # The local option is only enabled on Leopard. It causes strange
...
}

This last bit was what actually solved my problem.