Quick question about HFS+

Red-Drop · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 37

My linux servers use a few firewire external 320GB HDD for their backup system (current reiserfs). Most of my client machines are macs and I was thinking it would be really cool if i could pull these drives out and restore from backup on my macs.

Which leads me wondering what FS to use on the drives?

VFAT whould be good but it only has a 4GB file size limit which sux because my backup tarballs on average 130GB.

I was thinking now HFS+. Just want to know are there any issues with it. Does it have write support. Are the file size limits?
Is it stable enough for a production server?

Thanks Guys

Ash

ecosta · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 477 Location: Brussels,BE

From what I understand as of OS X the OS is based on BSD so if your MACs are version X or above, you should be able to simply use ext3.

That's all theory as I have not put my hands on a MAC in a very long time

Best way is to test it I guess. How do you do your backups? If tar.gz, I doubt that MAC OS9 will not be able to open it so back to square one.

Ed.
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A8N-SLI Delux / AMD64 X2 3800+ / 1024 MB RAM / 5 x 250 GB SATA RAID 1/5 / ATI Radeon X700 256MB.

Red-Drop · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 37

I'll check ext3. I know they dont reaid reiserfs. Yeah the OSX is based on BSD but it is a really really loose base much of the good functionality i have found is gone.

davidgurvich · Veteran Joined: 23 Apr 2004 Posts: 1063

I think there is an unsupported addon module for ext2. There is support for msdos, various flavors of ufs, like hfs and hfsplus, and the network filesystems. Other than that, I wouldn't count on much.

ecosta · Guru Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 477 Location: Brussels,BE

Well that's disapointing... What was the point of moving to a Unix base just to choke it?!?

Thanks for the info... sorry for misleading.
Ed.
_________________
Linux user #201331
A8N-SLI Delux / AMD64 X2 3800+ / 1024 MB RAM / 5 x 250 GB SATA RAID 1/5 / ATI Radeon X700 256MB.

Red-Drop · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 37

Dont get me wrong OSX is a fantastic OS but it is by no means a true replacement for a Linux user. For a very long time i thought it was I could do almost everything I wanted. But slowly and sureley things arose that I could not do.

Any way that SUX about the lack of a compatible file system. I really cant see the point of removing good and stable functionality from the BSD kernel like support for EXT2/3 and reiserfs. Even if they only made it available through the terminal so that JOE newb never had to see it.

I say 10.5 (Domestic short hair) should be the hard core OS!!!!!!

AdShea · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 62

Non-journaled HFS+ support is in the kernel (both read and write) this is natively usable by macs. There's even userland tools for it ported from OSX-x86