Developers will be able to build file systems into Mac OS X applications with the MacFUSE programming tools that Amit Singh, engineering manager with Google's Macintosh Group, developed in his spare time. Macintosh developers gained a new Mac OS X software programming tool with the release of an open-source Mac version of the FUSE file system module for Linux. Amit Singh, engineering manager of the Macintosh Group at Google and author of developed MacFUSE and released it at the recent Macworld Expo in San Francisco early in January 2007.
MacFUSE, Singh said, makes it easy for even casual programmers to write their own file systems, which they can build into Mac OS X user programs. With MacFUSE, users will be able to treat remote computer drives and even Web-based services as mountable drives on a local computer, he said. The FUSE module allows general users and application developers to create their own file systems without having to work directly with the kernel.
FUSE acts as an intermediary, enabling developers to call its programming interfaces, which then communicate with the kernel. Some examples of applications using virtual file systems through FUSE include which allows users to set up a Gmail account as a local disk, and which allows users to interact with files on a remote computer via SSH (Secure Shell). Singh said Mac OS X users could also use MacFUSE to mount Windows hard drives.
'The biggest use people are finding is that there's no NTFS NT File System read/write in OS X. But there are NTFS drivers for Linux,' he said. 'Using MacFUSE, it's like using a local disk. If you can connect via SSH into that machine, you can make files on that machine look like they're local and browse them in the Finder. It's far more seamless than using a remote client—you just see the files.' Singh pointed out that Mac OS X users could even implement this and access any Windows drives they have created through Mac OS X's Boot Camp.
Another application of MacFUSE is for use with Web services. 'I think this is the biggest potential,' Singh said. Free download hyper sudoku for mac. 'Users have a lot of interaction in the browser, but people are used to the 30-year-old desktop metaphor.
MacFUSE lets you unify all the Web services as though they were local files. Instead of dealing within the browser, then downloading to disk, you can just drag and drop in the Finder,' he said. Most existing FUSE plug-ins should 'just work,' Singh said, though he added that some may require some tweaking in order to move them from Linux to OS X. 'The possibilities are endless,' he said. Singh said MacFUSE was a 'homebrew' project developed in his '20 percent time,' the time set aside for Google engineers in which they can pursue their own projects. Google News, AdSense for Content and other public products grew out of such private projects.
The biggest challenges, Singh said, arose from making sure that MacFUSE was fully compatible with the existing FUSE standard. He pointed out there are 800 file systems for the Linux FUSE implementation. 'To comply with FUSE API on Linux was a technical challenge,' he said. 'I worked hard just making sure everything worked.'
Singh said this work was only possible with the latest version of Mac OS X. 'Only in Tiger Mac OS X 10.4 did Apple have a stable API for file systems in OS X,' Singh said. Assuring quality was also a concern for Singh. 'You really can't afford to have bugs in kernel software.
Does the display work? You may need to enter the BIOS and change the graphics settings to external graphics else it will try to use the on-board graphics, which won't work if you have disabled the drivers Start from scratch, reinstall windows 7 then check the BIOS is set to use on-board graphics. Ati radeon xl 8m pci drivers for mac.
That causes crashes,' he said. However, Singh said that didn't mean there wouldn't be bugs, 'but people will have high expectations.' This, he said, led to the project's mantra of 'release early, release often.' Overall, Singh said he was pleased with the work. 'It's one of the things I've been missing on OS X for a long time,' he said. He added that he's received good comments on MacFUSE. 'Reactions on blogs show me that people are very happy,' he said.
'It looks like it's taking off. We hope Apple takes advantage of it.' A video demonstration by Singh of MacFUSE's capabilities is available on Check out eWEEK.com's for the latest news, reviews and analysis on Apple in the enterprise.
Googleis Amit Singh on Thursday about the File System in User Space (FUSE) project for Mac OS X called MacFUSE. He wrote: 'FUSE makes it possible to implement a very functional file system in a normal program rather than requiring a complex addition to the operating system.' Singh is the author of the popular book, ' and is Googleis Mac Engineering Manager. FUSE was originally created for Linux and has now been ported to FreeBSD.
Singh wrote, 'We hope that MacFUSE will not only make several existing FUSE file systems readily available to Macintosh users - typically, right out of the box - but will also help Macintosh developers give vent to their creative fervor and come up with innovative products and file systems that we have never seen before.' Details on MacFUSE have been made available on the.
I always use the first form, although without sudo (as long as you are in the admin group it should work). You can optionally pass a third parameter to use a log file. That might shed some light in the issue: mbpro: gerard$./Development/ext4fuse/ext4fuse /dev/disk0s5 t log mbpro: gerard$ ls t gerard lost+found The file 'log' should now contain some debugging info. Send it to me ([email protected]), create a issue in github or simply post it here.
Google Developers Blog: Macfuse: Fuse For Mac Pro
Get sure you are using at least OSX 10.5 with intel (ppc won't work). Also, I've only tested this with native ext4 partitions (no ext3 to ext4 upgrades), so it might give you problems if you have the later scenario. Edit: As of June 21st, 2017, the syntax for getting a log file is: ext4fuse -o logfile=/dev/stdout.
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