Do any Mac users out there have a method of accessing ReiserFS volumes outside of UnRAID? One thing that drew me to UnRAID was the possibility of accessing my files, from a drive dock or somesuch, in the event that UnRAID got buggered up. This seems to be an impossibility (at least to me). All the methods I have seen are ages old and require knowledge of FUSE usage that escape me.

 

Currently, I am still on 4.7, as there are some problems that are just too scary for me to tke the leap to 5.0 beta. NFS problems are the biggie, as I use this almost exclusively. My fear is that I won't be able to access the data on my drives without UnRAID in the future.

 

People seem to have luck using Linux Live disks to access reiserFS drives. This, seems beyond my abilities. If there is a well written easy to understand guide to doing this I would greatly appreciate being pointed int he right direction, as most I have seen seem difficult to implement. I'm sure this is just trepidation on my part, but i would love to hear if there is an easy way to access the reiserFS file system on a Mac.

 

TL;DR: how do I mount a reiserFS disk on MAc OS X 10.6.8?

 

Thanks for your indulgence.

Unfortunately, Macs do not support ReiserFS. I checked out MacFUSE to see if it might support it, but that is a no-go as well. I am afraid that you are out of luck wrt getting a Mac to directly support your ReiserFS hard drives. You may have to put them onto a Linux system and then access them from the Mac through the Linux box via sshfs or some such.

 

Download VirtualBox and install Ubuntu to it

Mount ReiserFS in the virtual machine

Make a samba share in the virtual machine

Access the Samba share in Mac OS

Yah, I've seen those steps while trying to figure this out. Problem is I have no experience with VirtualBox, Ubuntu, or the like. I guess I could dive in and hope for the best, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Sorta beginning to regret the reiserfs choice now. MAybe there will be a way to change the fs to something that isn't dead in the future.

ratmice:

 

If you have an Intel-Mac, you should be able to boot most any Linux variant. If I remember correctly, to run 10.6 you need an Intel Mac. It least that is what I remember. Been a while since I tried to do fancy things with Mac/Linux.

 

It also seems to me that you can run a VM of Linux in the Mac OS using commercial products for that purpose. I am not familiar with any free versions. But there are several product made just for this purpose.

 

Also, rather than Ubuntu, I would recommend Mint.

 

Bruce

Yes it's an Intel Mac (MacPro 1,1). I probably have a copy of VMWare or Parallels around somwhere, but I'm dreading the process of getting it up and running. Probably unfounded dread, but there it is. I guess I just need to cowboy up and git 'r done.

 

Mint? I assume is a flavor of Linux distro. I'll check into it. Thanks for the tip. Maybe an atetmpt at getting a "live' disk running will be easier in the long run.

 

It's a shame that FUSE died for Mac OS X. Seems like it is basic funtionality that would be useful in many ways, and someone surely would have hacked a reiserfs driver for it.

Most Linux distributions have a 'live' cd option that allows you to boot Linux without anything being installed to hard disk.  This can be a useful way to run for occasional use.

Thanks for the input. I'm going to try a live CD to see if there's a way to get access - I'm a bit worried that the drive dock I would use to access the drives would not be supported, and getting drivers that work with a live CD would be difficult to implement. . Also, I'm about to upgrade my bootcamp install to Win7 and it seems that there is a bit more reiserFS support available. All I really want to be able to do is get at the data on the disks in case of a an UnRAID meltdown, or server hardware issue.

All I really want to be able to do is get at the data on the disks in case of a an UnRAID meltdown, or server hardware issue.

Then all you really need is a USB stick with a free version of unraid on it. In your hypothetical scenario, you've probably already given up on parity, so you can just plug in the drive you want to read into any PC, boot up the free version of unraid, and assign the single disk as a data disk and read away. Unraid is really good about using just about any old piece of hardware, especially if you are only talking about reading a single data drive.

just plug in the drive you want to read into any PC

 

That's the problem, there are no PCs. I admit I've never tried to boot my MacPro using UnRAID from a USB drive, but I can tell you I'm not optimistic.

That's the problem, there are no PCs. I admit I've never tried to boot my MacPro using UnRAID from a USB drive, but I can tell you I'm not optimistic.

If you are able to disconnect the hard drive in the mac prior to testing, I'm fairly sure there is no way you could mess up anything by trying. If you leave the hard drive attached, it should still be ok as long as you don't assign any drives. You should do it, just to satisfy the internet's curiosity.

That's the problem, there are no PCs. I admit I've never tried to boot my MacPro using UnRAID from a USB drive, but I can tell you I'm not optimistic.

If you are able to disconnect the hard drive in the mac prior to testing, I'm fairly sure there is no way you could mess up anything by trying. If you leave the hard drive attached, it should still be ok as long as you don't assign any drives. You should do it, just to satisfy the internet's curiosity.

 

That's what I thought last weekend when I tried installing Mint Linux so I could access resierfs that way. I had a triple boot Mac for about 5 minutes, then realized that there was no way to delete the Linux partition and GRUB had overtaken my Boot Camp partition so OS X wouldnt touch it. At the same time my windows install was borked enough to require a full wipe and reinstall.  Needless to say it took MANY hours (days) to recover from that little fiasco.

That's the problem, there are no PCs. I admit I've never tried to boot my MacPro using UnRAID from a USB drive, but I can tell you I'm not optimistic.

If you are able to disconnect the hard drive in the mac prior to testing, I'm fairly sure there is no way you could mess up anything by trying. If you leave the hard drive attached, it should still be ok as long as you don't assign any drives. You should do it, just to satisfy the internet's curiosity.

 

That's what I thought last weekend when I tried installing Mint Linux so I could access resierfs that way. I had a triple boot Mac for about 5 minutes, then realized that there was no way to delete the Linux partition and GRUB had overtaken my Boot Camp partition so OS X wouldnt touch it. At the same time my windows install was borked enough to require a full wipe and reinstall.  Needless to say it took MANY hours (days) to recover from that little fiasco.

Yes, but installing mint linux by default wanted to write to your system's main boot drive, unraid will never write to a hard drive unless it is assigned in the disk manager or manually mounted. It's apples and oranges.