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Apple Businesses

Sharing a Firewire Drive Between Mac and Linux? 56

Posted by Cliff from the one-filesystem-to-bind-them dept.
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?"
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Sharing a Firewire Drive Between Mac and Linux? More

Sharing a Firewire Drive Between Mac and Linux?

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  • 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.
  • One format that seems to be supported by both Mac OS X and Linux is the UDF format [softarch.com]. This format is
    • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?
    • Don't have a Mac, so I can't try it myself, but why not install Samba on the OS-X machine, create some share points and connect to them from the Windows box.

      OS-X is basically Free-BSD, isn't it?
      • OS X is free-BSD (the name mach 4 kernel sounds familiar?) with a GUI that's alot less versitile than the X windows system (although it's pretty nifty and fairly streamlined. i like it, sans the lack of keyboardability that isn't as solid as i'd like (windows quality keybordability would be GREAT))

        samba for OS X 10.2 is still in beta, and i think it is mostly geared twords being seen on a network, not recognizing windows (essentially) internal drives.

        i *have* a windows box, but it's not usually turned on/accessed. the idea would be to have a windows compatible (aka windows formatted) firewire/usb 2.0 drive i can take to my friend's house and plug in and boot off of, or swap files with. go to lan parties and have my custom quake3 config file all set up, ect. and then also to back up the files that are on my mac format firewire drive (about 30 gigs worth)
        • First of all, if OS X were FreeBSD, samba support for it would be way past beta by now.

          Secondly, FreeBSD doesn't use the Mach kernel, it uses the BSD kernel, although newer versions of Mach are binary compatible with FreeBSD according to the Mach4 homepage.

          Lastly, Samba has always been for accessing windows drives over a network. It's a free version of SMB, a protocol developed by MS and IBM for transfering data across a network. It has never been for use with internal drives, and probably never will be, because it is a network protocol.

        • Samba is included in 10.2.

          Go to Sharing Prefrences and enable "Windows File Sharing."

          Jaguar is a wonderful thing.
          • 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. [apple.com]
    • It doesn't play with NTFS -- not at all. Nothing does as far as I'm aware.
    • Format the disc in FAT32 and it will work with MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
  • 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.
    • FeeBSD? Is that a new name for BSD/OS [windriver.com]?
    • Mac OS X should be able to see all partition types that FeeBSD can see. Linux too.

      I was thinking that, too. I have no experience OS X, of course, but everybody keeps talking about how it's a *nix. It would be pretty lame if something as dumb as support for open file system formats was the thing that killed that notion.

      • Mac OS X should be able to see all partition types that FeeBSD can see. Linux too.

        Not entirely true; Mac OS X has a FreeBSD compatibility layer, but is not based on the FreeBSD kernel. It uses a Mach Microkernel, similar to GNU HURD. Although they can technically port any filesystem drivers from FreeBSD over to OS X, this is not true for Linux filesystem drivers- Since Linux is covered under the GPL, filesystem drivers in Linux are also covered. Hence, without GPL'ing OS X (at least their entire Kernel), they can't pull anything from Linux.

        So, you won't likely see anything like reiserfs in OS X anytime soon.

        Does anyone know if it's easy / possible to create a third-party filesystem driver for OS X? I don't like Apple stuff, so I don't know much about that part of OS X internals. Do they have a Loadable Kernel Module interface? Anything like that?
        • Somebody doesn't know what 'microkernel' means, nor understand the GPL.

          First, microkernels are all about modules, in fact, modularized drivers are the whole point of having a microkernel. So, yes, in theory a third party could write drivers. However, as you have already pointed out, at least indirectly, the OS X kernel is a closed Mach variant, so who really knows if it's possible to create driver modules for third party file systems? It seems like it would be a stupid thing to prevent, but I'm sure an MBA could make a reasonable-sounding case for it.

          Also, while we're on the subject, It's the Mach kernel which is BSD compatible, since at least Mach3. That isn't something special that Apple added.

          Now as for the GPL, they could use the GPL code only in the module, which would mean that only the module would be subject to the GPL, or they could write their own code which interfaces with the APIs (or whatever they are called) for reiser/ext3/whatever and none of their code would be subject to the GPL.

          Don't buy the FUD. The GPL is not nearly as viral as Microsoft would have you believe.

          • Actually, last I read, under the GPL, modules which are inserted into running code count as derivative works. The linux kernel makes a special exception saying that binary-only modules are allowed. In any case, it's a sticky subject, and they'd need to at least secure permission for this specific use of the code.

            My question about whether or not third-party modules could be created was meant as "has apple made the interface for this an open specification?".. That is, I know how microkernels work, but I don't know how feasible it is for mac os X. Do they include the right header files and provide an API for third-party (especially open-source-- They can very possibly put some sticky licensing into a developer license for the API) modules?

            As for the "viral" nature of the GPL, It's so called because a large number of open-source licenses allow their code to be included into GPL'd code, but the GPL does not allow that same liberty.
  • 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).

  • More things I've tried (from the poster) (Score:4, Informative)

    by jhealy1024 ( 234388 ) on Thursday September 19, 2002 @10:06AM (#4288397)
    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... =)


    • Well, there's one thing you might try: instead of sharing the drive between two machines over firewire, share the *machines* over firewire.

      Since you seem to be working with video, its no surprise that ethernet isn't working (over smb). And the file format issues are going to always be suspect (in my mind) even if both machines officially supported the same format.

      So, what I would try to do is network the machines using firewire and Firewire IP, and then share the drive using whatever protocol works from the Mac to the Linux box.

      The big wrinkle of course is whether both support firewire IP. I'm not even sure the Mac does, and IU suspect Linux doesn't yet, but I could be wrong. It seems to be a pretty new standard.
      • How is using "firewire IP" (whatever that is...) different from using "ethernet IP"? If there's no common filesystem that both machines can handle, you still need NFS or SMB or something similar to share filesystems.
        Connectivity is not the issue, it's compatability. Unlike USB, firewire allows more than one cpu on a chain, so both machines can see the drive on the same firewire chain.
    • I have worked with Tens of GB(58gb+) files over NFS between linux boxes. Make sure that nfs version 3 or higher is enabled in your kernel. Chances are the version of mac OS you are using does not support NFS a newer version of NFS.

  • 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.

  • HFS (Score:2)

    by fault0 ( 514452 )
    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.
    • HFS Classic has a 2GB Size Limit, which is worse than FAT16 (4GB).

      Speaking of, the poster made an error. FAT32 does not have a 4GB partition limit - FAT16 does.

      • Re:HFS (Score:1)

        by Ster ( 556540 )
        I think the 4GB refers to the maximum size of an individual file, not the whole filesystem. I'm pretty sure I've created single files on HFS+ that were larger than 4GB, but I couldn't copy them onto a FAT32 drive because they were too large.

        It's been a while since I've tried this, though, so salt to taste. :-)

        -Ster

      • Re:HFS (Score:3, Informative)

        by Keith Russell ( 4440 )
        FAT32 does not have a 4GB partition limit - FAT16 does.

        The poster was talking about the file size limit, not the partition size. I double checked MSDN [microsoft.com] to be sure, and both FAT16 and FAT32 limit files to 2^32 - 1 bytes. It's a shame OS X can't use NTFS. The file size limit there is 2^64 - 1 bytes. That much pr0n and MP3 can kill a man. :-)

    • Further limit is that Microsoft recommends FAT32 be limited to volumes less than 32GB. Many operations break when partitions larger than 32GB are used.


      XP forces NTFS for partitions larger than 32GB.


      Mike

  • No filesystem at all? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    You know, you don't need a filesystem to use a disk. The filesystem just makes it a lot easier.

    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.

    • Yes you're right, which is why I said as much here [slashdot.org], the first answer to the question, and 7 hours before you posted.

      My reward? 2 "Redundant" down mods, and irrefutable proof that the moderation system is truly broken.
      • It seems likely that both of us were zapped by Cliff or some other editor. If that's true, then the mod system isn't broken. (It's a little flaky, of course. Always has been, always will be.) It's just an editor abusing his infinite mod points.

        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.

        • 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.
          • You tell that to the people who have a +1 posting bonus, or to those who can only post twice a day.
            I take it you consider these bonuses and penalties wrong. That's less than obvious to me.
            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.
            Do you have a point? None of this is news. It's all in the mod guideliness, though not as concisely worded.
            • I take it you consider these bonuses and penalties wrong. That's less than obvious to me.
              I consider it neither right nor wrong. I was just being pedantic.

              And I wasn't making a point with the other thing, just ranting. The fact that you knew where else that is written means that it wasn't aimed at you!
  • 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 . . .

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