Ext

EXT

Installation

Note: that FUSE-Ext2 has some issues with OSX 10.11 "El Capitan".

Note #2: Make sure "MacFUSE Compatibility Layer" was selected when you installed OSXFuse.

Download and install FUSE-Ext2 - (Official Website).

Usage

$ fuse-ext2 <device|image> <mountpoint> [-o option[,...]]
options:
ro   : mount read only
force: mount read/write
allow_other: allow other users to access
debug: noisy debug output

$ mount -t fuse-ext2 /dev/sda2 /mnt/sda2

Although write support is available (and pretty stable) please do not mount your filesystems with write support if you have something to lose.

Write Support

Write support is disabled by default, to enable write functionality for all volumes run the following command in Terminal (one line). You will be asked to enter your admin password.:

    sudo sed -e 's/OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions"/OPTIONS="auto_xattr,defer_permissions,rw+"/' -i.orig /System/Library/Filesystems/fuse-ext2.fs/fuse-ext2.util

Alternate instructions if installed from binary

If you installed fuse-ext2 in some other way, like from a .dmg file you got off the back of a github repo, you may need to edit the fuse-ext2.util file manually. (Note: this is not an endorsement of that or any other 3rd-party binary distributions of fuse-ext2. Please use common sense if you choose to install an unsigned, unknown binary from the internet.)

First, find the file. On some systems it may be found at /Library/Filesystems/fuse-ext2.fs/fuse-ext2.util. Otherwise, you can find it using this command:

    sudo find / -name fuse-ext2.util

Then, edit that file (you will need root privileges, so you'll either need to auth or use sudo). In my case, the existing OPTIONS list contained only "local" and I needed to change it to "local,rw+" to allow writing:

    # OPTIONS="local"
    OPTIONS="local,rw+"

It was not using "auto_xattr" or "defer_permissions" and, on OS X 10.11, adding either of those made the mount operation fail.