[gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[Andrew Lowe]

Hi all,
	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
get some large files off. I though Mac's could read NTFS, the files are
bigger than 4GB hence NTFS over FAT32, hence formatted a spare USB drive
as NTFS and then plugged it into the machine. No go on the copy. I tried
a few things then it dawned on me that the Mac probably couldn't write
to the disk - bummer....

	A google search for things led me to the following procedure and was
wondering if anyone had already done this and could advise.

1) Format USB via the Mac using HFS+

2) copy files to disk

3) Enable HFS+ in the kernel of my machine and rebuild

4) Boot my machine with the new kernel

5) Plug USB into my machine and mount

6) Copy files off to my machine

7) Format the USB back to something the rest of the world can use ;)

Is that it? I can't do anything with the mac machine, NTFS-3g etc, so I
have to fit into the Mac world as much as possible. Have I missed
anything? Any tips or tricks or is there no need as it's that simple?

	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[Fernando Rodriguez]

On Saturday, September 05, 2015 12:57:02 AM Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
> get some large files off. I though Mac's could read NTFS, the files are
> bigger than 4GB hence NTFS over FAT32, hence formatted a spare USB drive
> as NTFS and then plugged it into the machine. No go on the copy. I tried
> a few things then it dawned on me that the Mac probably couldn't write
> to the disk - bummer....

Just mount the NTFS filesystem as rw.

> 	A google search for things led me to the following procedure and was
> wondering if anyone had already done this and could advise.
> 
> 1) Format USB via the Mac using HFS+
> 
> 2) copy files to disk
> 
> 3) Enable HFS+ in the kernel of my machine and rebuild
> 
> 4) Boot my machine with the new kernel
> 
> 5) Plug USB into my machine and mount
> 
> 6) Copy files off to my machine
> 
> 7) Format the USB back to something the rest of the world can use ;)
> 
> Is that it? I can't do anything with the mac machine, NTFS-3g etc, so I
> have to fit into the Mac world as much as possible. Have I missed
> anything? Any tips or tricks or is there no need as it's that simple?
> 
> 	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> 
> 		Andrew
> 

-- 
Fernando Rodriguez

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[Stroller]

On Fri, 4 September 2015, at 5:57 pm, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
> 
> 	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
> get some large files off. I though Mac's could read NTFS, the files are
> bigger than 4GB hence NTFS over FAT32, hence formatted a spare USB drive
> as NTFS and then plugged it into the machine. No go on the copy. I tried
> a few things then it dawned on me that the Mac probably couldn't write
> to the disk - bummer….

All you describe sounds like it should work.

I can't remember how good OS X's NTFS handling is - after they first switched to Intel I think one had to install Bootcamp to get any Windows related drivers. Yosemite is the latest production version os Mac OS, though, so I doubt that any longer applies. 

Likewise, I can't recollect if Linux's HFS+ drivers write ok. 

It shouldn't take you long to compile HFS+ as a module and mount an Mac drive to find out for yourself - you shouldn't need to reboot the machine, just add HFS as a module using `make menuconfig`, then something like `make modules install` (??). I think you might need to `insmod` or `depmod` before the kernel knows about the new driver to load it automatically, but I wouldn't bother.

If I were you I would just stick with a FAT32 filesystem, tar up the files on the Mac, and then use `split` to break your tarball into 3GB chunks. Then reassemble the pieces when you copy them to your own compy.

• http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1588/break-a-large-file-into-smaller-pieces
• http://askubuntu.com/questions/54579/how-to-split-larger-files-into-smaller-parts
• http://ccm.net/faq/785-linux-cutting-a-file-into-several-parts

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[Daniel Frey]

On 09/04/2015 09:57 AM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
> get some large files off. I though Mac's could read NTFS, the files are
> bigger than 4GB hence NTFS over FAT32, hence formatted a spare USB drive
> as NTFS and then plugged it into the machine. No go on the copy. I tried
> a few things then it dawned on me that the Mac probably couldn't write
> to the disk - bummer....
> 
> 	A google search for things led me to the following procedure and was
> wondering if anyone had already done this and could advise.
> 
> 1) Format USB via the Mac using HFS+
> 
> 2) copy files to disk
> 
> 3) Enable HFS+ in the kernel of my machine and rebuild
> 
> 4) Boot my machine with the new kernel
> 
> 5) Plug USB into my machine and mount
> 
> 6) Copy files off to my machine
> 
> 7) Format the USB back to something the rest of the world can use ;)
> 
> Is that it? I can't do anything with the mac machine, NTFS-3g etc, so I
> have to fit into the Mac world as much as possible. Have I missed
> anything? Any tips or tricks or is there no need as it's that simple?
> 
> 	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> 
> 		Andrew
> 

One other thing to keep in mind is that the disallowed characters in
filenames are different from Linux/Mac(?)/Windows. So if you get a
strange error copying a file check for invalid characters in the file name.

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[James]

Andrew Lowe <agl <at> wht.com.au> writes:

> 	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
> get some large files off. 

I do not use MACos, so I might be off base here:: 
why can you not just use 'rsync' to transfer the files [1] ?


https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/
Reference/ManPages/man1/rsync.1.html



hth,
James

Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Getting stuff off a Mac machine

[Andrew Lowe]

On 09/05/2015 12:57 AM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	A friend has a, I thin a few years old - Yosemite, Mac that I need to
> get some large files off. I though Mac's could read NTFS, the files are
> bigger than 4GB hence NTFS over FAT32, hence formatted a spare USB drive
> as NTFS and then plugged it into the machine. No go on the copy. I tried
> a few things then it dawned on me that the Mac probably couldn't write
> to the disk - bummer....
> 
> 	A google search for things led me to the following procedure and was
> wondering if anyone had already done this and could advise.
> 
> 1) Format USB via the Mac using HFS+
> 
> 2) copy files to disk
> 
> 3) Enable HFS+ in the kernel of my machine and rebuild
> 
> 4) Boot my machine with the new kernel
> 
> 5) Plug USB into my machine and mount
> 
> 6) Copy files off to my machine
> 
> 7) Format the USB back to something the rest of the world can use ;)
> 
> Is that it? I can't do anything with the mac machine, NTFS-3g etc, so I
> have to fit into the Mac world as much as possible. Have I missed
> anything? Any tips or tricks or is there no need as it's that simple?
> 
> 	Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
> 
> 		Andrew
> 
> 

	Just closing off this question of mine. Thanks to those who offered
answers. The steps I outlined above proved to be the easiest to go. I
COULD NOT modify my friends Mac - I have never used a Mac before and my
friend knows how to start a word processor and view movies, that's all.

	Rsync was suggested. It would either require mods or a lot of reading
on my part.

	Splitting the files to sub 4GB "splits" was also suggested, but I
couldn't find the console and didn't even know if Macs had a split
thingy - but now as I think about it, it's BSD derived so it would.

	Simply mounting the NTFS device was also mentioned, but the version of
the OS didn't have that native and would require changes.

	So thanks for the thoughts.

		Andrew