read BSD format disk from Mac OSX

[David Kelly]

On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 09:16:02AM -0500, Tsu-Fan Cheng wrote:
> Hi all,
>     I format a ext disk (UFS) and transfer some files into it, hand it
> over to my friend who has a macbook. He complained the macbook can't
> read it. I don't have a mac on hand, I wonder if there is any utility
> that will help a mac to read a BSD, thanks!!

The easiest way to do what you are attempting is to format the disk FAT.
Then to preserve file attributes write your files in a tar archive.

MacOS X knows UFS but might not know how to decipher a FreeBSD disk
label. I haven't honestly tried. What I did do once was move a couple of
drives previously used as a vinum striped RAID to MacOS X. Was
frustrated that the MacOS Drive Utility would not allow me to create
another striped volume on those drives. What I found out was that the
drives had a Microsoft compatible disk label written by FreeBSD which
MacOS was happily honoring. Would happily put an HFS+ partition on the
drives. But MacOS X RAID had to be established at a lower level using a
Macintosh disk label.

-- 
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly at HiWAAY.net
========================================================================
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.