MacFUSE 2.0 was recently released onto the world, and now, its author, Amit Singh, as given Mac users something they’ve been waiting for ever since they first laid eyes on Mac OS X: access to numerous old (and more recent) file systems, through something called AncientFS. Always wanted to mount v1tap DEC tapes as ordinary volumes in Mac OS X? Here’s your chance.
AncientFS is a file system for MacFUSE that will mount all sorts of ancient file systems in the form of data containers as regular volumes on Mac OS X. “Examples of ‘data containers’ include file system disk images, tape images, incremental file system dumps, tape archives, and library archives.” You may then browse these volumes through the Finder as if they were regular volumes. They are read-only, and will preserve as many aspects of the original file system as possible.
In addition, Singh also introduced support for file systems in the System V and UFS families, as well as support for MINIX’ file system. When put in a single image, this shows what new file system capabilities Mac OS X gets through these new features of MacFUSE.
I don’t know many of the ones in the ‘ancient’ category, but they do sound cool.
This is really cool, because data stored digitally really has a poor track record when it comes to longevity, not because the media is fragile (though that too, sometimes) but because after a couple decades, nobody has machines that can read it. This kind of project could prove to be very useful for historians and archivists in the future.
Looks like an interesting project, although I was disappointed that it seems to focus on Unix file systems. That said, I don’t suppose that retro gamers were really the target.
I’ve used most of those filesystems and I’ve got quite a bit of old code [NeXT based] that would be nice just to drag n’ drop over, then convert.
Tapeback up systems of older stuff will even help Apple and their archives.
Wasnt there a NEXT filesystem driver in Rhapsody? I dont know if it works on newer versions or if it ever even was released to the public. But i agree this is interesting indeed.
I believe that “NeXT” filesystem evolved into what is called now “UFS”.
I believe that “NeXT” filesystem evolved into what is called now “UFS”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_File_System
NeXTStep, which was BSD-derived, also used a version of UFS. In Apple’s Mac OS X, it is available as an alternative to HFS+, their proprietary filesystem. However, as of Mac OS X v10.5, one cannot install Mac OS X “Leopard” on a UFS-formatted volume. In addition, one cannot upgrade older versions of Mac OS X installed on UFS-formatted volumes to Leopard; upgrading requires reformatting the startup volume.
Its just a modified UFS…
Here’s a thread on the NeXT forums I frequent about accessing NeXT partitions from inside Windows.
http://nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1667
Thought it might be of interest.
I want to clarify that I can mount read-only my old NeXT archives in Linux. That’s not the issue. Being able to seemlessly work within Finder w/o the need of custom mount commands and more is what makes this intriguing for myself.
Anyone know if the improvements to sshfs reported in the changelogs make it worth using?
You’re going to have to expand on that. I’ve always found sshfs ‘worth using’. What’s your criteria? Where does it fall short?
BTW, when you leave a comment like that ‘have they made X worth using yet?’ without talking about any sort of specifics as to why X isn’t worth using, you just come across as bitchy. You probably don’t want that.
I was asking whether the implementation of sshfs in macfuse was worth using yet because it’s widely known, at least in circles I travel in, that previous implementations were lacking. Streaming sucked, errors were often kicked out while editing files on remote systems, etc. It has been a while since I’ve tried faffing with it, and I wanted to know it if was now ready for prime-time.
I use sshfs more or less exclusively on my linux boxen, but to allow mounting shares, etc, for my wife’s Macs, I had to setup samba/cifs.
Thanks for exposing my glaring weaknesses, oh great one.
-Bitchy Process