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olePigeon · Jan 17, 2007, 12:05 PM

Official Google Mac Blog: Taming Mac OS X File Systems

Picked this up off Slashdot just incase anyone missed it. MacFUSE adds full NTFS (read & write) support to OS X through a Kernel Extension.

Since my school has a mixed Mac and Windows environment, this is a very welcome addition.

real · Jan 17, 2007, 12:11 PM

Same with my work ntfs has been horrible I hope hope this will help.

FireWire · Jan 17, 2007, 12:26 PM

I always wondered why didn't Apple support this natively.. they go all the way to offer cross-platform compatibility yet they can't even support the native file system used in the Windows world...

While we're at it, please support WMV properly..

Person Man · Jan 17, 2007, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by FireWire

I always wondered why didn't Apple support this natively.. they go all the way to offer cross-platform compatibility yet they can't even support the native file system used in the Windows world...

While we're at it, please support WMV properly..

Microsoft won't open the specs to NTFS so other people can support it properly. Furthermore, to support it, people have to reverse engineer the spec. It is safer for Apple to provide read only support for NTFS because providing write support is too risky and it would open Apple up to a whole host of liability issues if they got something wrong with write support and people lost data because of it.

That's why Apple doesn't support it natively. If you want Apple to support it natively, then get Microsoft to open their spec to allow for proper support.

ghporter · Jan 17, 2007, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by FireWire

I always wondered why didn't Apple support this natively.. they go all the way to offer cross-platform compatibility yet they can't even support the native file system used in the Windows world...

While we're at it, please support WMV properly..

Apple didn't support NTFS because it's proprietary and they didn't want to pay Bill Gates the royalties for the specs and rights for it.

This does look promising... Hopefully MacFUSE will pan out as a real solution to cross-platform file system issues that doesn't bring in a bunch of its own.

CharlesS · Jan 17, 2007, 02:16 PM

The NTFS support here is probably reverse-engineered, so I don't know if I'd trust it with a disk containing any important data.

Mithras · Jan 17, 2007, 02:38 PM

~~As best I understand, it's a wrapper around Windows' own driver -- i.e. you must have Windows installed to use the driver. Though I'm not clear on how you read the NTFS driver from an NTFS disk...~~

No, I'm a dope. Reverse-engineered indeed. However, the web site states:

The driver currently is in BETA status, which means that no data corruption or loss has been reported during ordinary driver use, nor found in our extensive quality testing before release of the latest version, however we are aware of certain usability issues and driver limitations which are all documented and planned to be resolved in the future. It may be revealing about the high reliability of the NTFS-3G driver that an increasing number of users find hidden hardware faults, and several Microsoft released NTFS bugs during NTFS-3G testing and usage.

Anyway, the even more useful thing for me with MacFUSE is the sshfs driver, which works flawlessly.

kmkkid · Jan 17, 2007, 03:06 PM

Ok, so how exactly do you use this driver to mount your existing windows NTFS in r/w mode? Or can't you?

Eug · Jan 17, 2007, 03:19 PM

^^^ Anyone using this with their bootcamp partition?

Mithras · Jan 17, 2007, 03:29 PM

There's a thread with step-by-step instructions in the Ars forum, but the server seems to be down at the moment.

kmkkid · Jan 17, 2007, 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by Mithras

There's a thread with step-by-step instructions in the Ars forum, but the server seems to be down at the moment.

That's great and all, but the NTFS-3g errors out of configure saying I dont have the most current version of FUSE installed. Therefore I can't install it. Others got it to work fine. I'm confused now.

mduell · Jan 17, 2007, 06:02 PM

No ACL support is not full support.

dimmer · Jan 17, 2007, 06:11 PM

they didn't want to pay Bill Gates the royalties
Grump but I'm sure you know MS never even opened that opportunity. Like with DirectPlay. So it's not Apple being mean, it's a monopolist trying to control their market.

kmkkid · Jan 17, 2007, 07:01 PM

Well I got it working, now I just need to get the volume to auto-mount. rc.local doesn't seem to be cutting it.

olePigeon · Jan 17, 2007, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by dimmer

they didn't want to pay Bill Gates the royalties
Grump but I'm sure you know MS never even opened that opportunity. Like with DirectPlay. So it's not Apple being mean, it's a monopolist trying to control their market.

Bingo. Not to mention DirectX. Any and all transcoding libraries or ports were reverse engineered.

I

ing hate Microsoft. My dad works for Cisco with their IEEE standards stuff. The horror stories that come out of those meetings about Microsoft. If Microsoft ever shows up at a IEEE meeting, it's usually to announce that they're implementing a proprietary something-or-another and that everyone else should contact them to make sure the existing standards can operate with it.

ghporter · Jan 17, 2007, 07:23 PM

Yup, Microsoft just doesn't get "standards" that they don't invent. It's counterproductive for them to behave this way, but it appears to be a corporate "standard."

besson3c · Jan 17, 2007, 07:35 PM

sshfs looks very cool.

If anybody wants a quick little shareware project that could succeed quite nicely, write an OS X GUI for making connections via sshfs.

Or does one already exist?

goMac · Jan 18, 2007, 03:29 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Apple didn't support NTFS because it's proprietary and they didn't want to pay Bill Gates the royalties for the specs and rights for it.

I thought Apple had full access to Microsoft's patents and technology as part of their 1997 agreement. I know the agreement has expired, except Apple should still be able to get at patents and technology from that time frame.

Big Mac · Jan 18, 2007, 04:40 AM

Originally Posted by goMac

I thought Apple had full access to Microsoft's patents and technology as part of their 1997 agreement. I know the agreement has expired, except Apple should still be able to get at patents and technology from that time frame.

It seems like Apple only got money out of the deal because I've never heard of Apple using Microsoft technology.

real · Jan 18, 2007, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by kmkkid

Well I got it working, now I just need to get the volume to auto-mount. rc.local doesn't seem to be cutting it.

We have this problem at work. Everytime the cluster goes down we have to reboot our machines. there are still working on it.

I think thats what you are talking about

dimmer · Jan 19, 2007, 04:15 PM

I thought Apple had full access to Microsoft's patents and technology as part of their 1997 agreement.
Nope, they agreed to not counter-sue for patents filed pre-1994. Basically, Apple gave up everything the Mac had had to keep itself afloat in business. A good move, but if you look at the copies of OS X than MS keeps trotting out (while Cupertino mock them) it's pretty clear what ended up going on.