Is mounting an HFS+ drive on RedHat possible?

[WoundedWallet]

Sorry, I didn't want to start a new thread, so I edited the title. Meaning that this first post doesn't make a lot of sense. But the question now is : Is mounting an HFS+ drive on RedHat possible? If so how?

Please assume that I'm like your grandmother and you're trying to tell her over the phone how to do something in Linux.

Is there a way to take data out of a MacOS formated HD from inside Windows?

I'm trying to get data out of a Mac OS hd that is going bad.
It's IDE and formated with Mac OS extended(whatever that means)
I have one old Mac that is all SCSI the rest of my PCs are x86 and IDEs.

I found out that I can install Darwin on an x86, and I'm now downloading it.
But on the release notes it says that some ide drives "may not" work.
With my luck I can imagine what's gonna happen....

So that's why I'm also trying the Windows route.
I know there is a Mac Reader that opens Mac files.
But I'm looking fopr something that will let Windows read the whole HD.

Is there sucha program? Or any other way you can think of?

 

[Nothinman]

Darwin for x86 supports like 4 pieces of hardware last I saw, you'd be better off installing Linux and using the HFS+ driver in there.

As for Windows, there's no easy way that I know of. There were some utilities for reading Mac floppies on Windows but I'm not sure if a whole drive would be supported.

 

[WoundedWallet]

Nothinman, I have a brand new Red Hat(Fedora) installation that I'm just learning. You're saying that Linux will be able to read a MAc drive like a regular Linux drive?

Would you mind breaking down the process for me? I'm basically like a virgin in Linux.

 

[kd7fhd]

MacOpener by DataViz. I think they have a demo version.

 

[Nothinman]

You're saying that Linux will be able to read a MAc drive like a regular Linux drive?

Should, I havn't tried it but there are HFS and UFS drivers.

Put the disk in, figure out which device it is. /dev/hda is the master disk on first ide port, /dev/hdc is the master on the second ide port, etc.
Run 'fdisk -l /dev/whatever' to see the partition list.
Just out of curiosity run 'file -s /dev/whatever' on the partitions and see if it says what filesystem it is.
run 'mount -t <filesystem type> /dev/whatever /mnt" to mount the partition at /mnt.
If that all works out you should be able to access the Mac disk from under /mnt.

 

[WoundedWallet]

Thanks Nothinman, I shall try that tomorrow

 

[WoundedWallet]

Ok Nothinman. I need more hand holding. Don't worry, I'm not too hairy or sweaty :disgust:

Anyway, I managed to mount the drive(hdb), but it is formated as HFS+ and not just HFS. So I can read the warning inside the drive "Where_have_all_my_files_gone" but that's about it. They put that warning and some other stuff to prevent an HFS system to format/erase data on a HFS+ drive.

So I tried "mount -t hfsplus ..." and that didn't work. SO I'm assuming that there are no hfsplus drivers.

But I found a lot of info about a hfsplusutils utility, that may be what I need. BUT I could only find rpms for Mandrake, Debian and Yellowdog(PPC). I'm trying this on RedHat and I'm not so sure how I would get the source and compile it for RH if that is possible or the right thing to do. My knowledge is very limited with Linux, although I have compiled some stuff in school before(just don't ask me what).

So if you could, please hint me on what to do next, or where I can find more info about reading HFS+ files in RedHAt. I would install Mandrake, but I couldn't find a download link on their site. Is it a paid distribution?

Thanks

PS.
Never mind about the download link. I'm downloading it now. But if you still know of an easier way to get this utility to work on redhat, please let me know.

 

[WoundedWallet]

bump for new title

 

[WoundedWallet]

I wanna know what part is it that I can start crying?

I installed Mandrake, installed the hfsplusutils rpm, and couldn't mount the HD.

Now at this point I don't know whether the hfsplusutils is an application on its own that I have to run, or something that would help me on mounting the friking thing. Or worse, if I did everything right but the util is buggy like some people say.

Plus, I also have the src, that says something about a makefile. But I have it on a cd, and if I try to execute a make command it complains about the file being read only.

Well I don't know how to navigate on Linux file system. I don't understand the hierarchy, and I can't copy the files from the cd to the good hd.

Anyone know anything about what I'm talking about? This is my second night of no sleep and no progress. What forum should I go to ask these questions?

This is my second go at Linux(first a couple years ago), I really want it to work, and I feel I'm more experienced than the average windows user. But everything is so unintuitive that my hopes for a Linux takeover of the desktop are tumbling down. I say that Steve Jobs needs to give some of his talent to the Linux community, free....

 

[n0cmonkey]

It isn't unintuitive, it's different. Get some sleep.

 

[WoundedWallet]

Well I disagree with you n0cmonkey. For me it is unintuitive and it is different. But I do agree that I needed sleep, so thank you for caring.

Now I have good news and bad news. The good news is that won't lose any more sleep with it. The bad news is that even though I managed to install the right packages and learn that /root is not the real root, it still gave me errors when mounting the drive.

It could be because I had shytload of drives already mounted or because of a real problem on the drive. Or even that the utility had some bug. But it doesn't matter anymore, I've given up and I'm returning the drive. If I ever get it back I'll spend money and buy a pci card for the old mac I have here. Something I should've done first instead of wasting all this time.

Thanks for all the help.