Sharing external drive between Linux and Mac OS X
 

Hello,

I've seen similar messages on this forum but none that answered my question.

I have an external USB hard drive which I use for backups. I backup my Linux laptop on the ext3 partition. I just created an hfs+ partition to backup my MacBook. I used qtparted to create the partition and the tools described on the pages

http://www.debian-administration.org.../lee/weblog/21
and
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_hfsplus...lesystem_Tools

to format the partition with the hfs+ filesystem using the command

mkfs.hfsplus -s -v MacPartition /dev/sda1

However, when I plug the drive into the MacBook, it doesn't mount it. Trying to mount it from the Disk Utility doesn't succeed either.

What are my options here? Where did I do something wrong?

Thanks in advance !

The old fallback
 

I recommend just formating in the the FAT or FAT32 standard. One full drive with a single partition on your backup. This File System is readable and writeable from almost all OS's. Have you ever tried Linux for PPC? Maybe the problem lies in trying to multiple partition a backup drive via USB. It really isn't necessary.

Thanks for the good old fallback. But what if you'd like to preserve file permissions and the like?

What if you create the partition for Mac using your MacBook, leave space for Linux partition and format it later under Linux?

Yes that is a possibility and I guess I am going to do that.

The reason why I haven't done that yet is that I've already been using the drive to backup my linux laptop. The ext3 partition already contains data and I was just hoping I wouldn't have to re-do the rsync. Not a big deal I admit.

Thanks for your suggestions.

you dont theres a hack that can use ext3 file systems under osx, its called ExtFsManager, i use it to move files on to my linux partitons on my mac, the lastest version is universal. Sorry i dont have a link im pretty sure its on source forge though