Accessing USB drive with Linux

[SOLUTION?] I can confirm that the fuse-ext2 module enables at least read-only access to ext3 filesystems with 16K block sizes, such as those created using Frontview on a ReadyNAS NV+ to format an external USB drive. I was able to mount and read files off my external drive with OS X 10.4 on a PowerPC Mac and Ubuntu 9.10 on a PC.

Tested software configuration:

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 (Tiger)


• MacFUSE 2.0.2 (installed using the .dmg here)


• fuse-ext2 0.0.7 (installed using the .dmg here)


• Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic)


• Ubuntu fuseext2 package, version 0.3-1, from the "universe" repository


• Official Ubuntu fuse-utils and libfuse2 packages, version 2.7.4-1.1ubuntu4.3

Instructions for Mac OS X:

1. Install MacFUSE, then install fuse-ext2 (a reboot was not required)


2. Determine the device file for the external USB drive and ext3 filesystem using Disk Utility. Mine was /dev/disk2s1.


3. Open Terminal and create a folder as a mountpoint--somewhere--for the ext3 filesystem. It doesn't matter where. Even /Volumes is okay, but OS X will remove the folder in /Volumes once you've unmounted the filesystem using Finder.
   

   mkdir "/Volumes/External Drive"



4. Open Terminal and run the following:

   fuse-ext2 -o ro /dev/disk2s1 "/Volumes/External Drive"



5. A new disk icon should appear on the desktop. Unmount it in the usual way when you're done.


Instructions for Linux (Ubuntu/Debian):

1. Ensure the "universe" repository is enabled in "Software Sources" (not required for Debian 5.0 "Lenny") and refresh the package listing if necessary (sudo apt-get update in a console). Install the fuseext2 package, which should pull down all the required dependencies:

   sudo apt-get install fuseext2



2. Determine the device file for the external USB drive and ext3 filesystem using fdisk (dash ell). Mine was /dev/sdb1.

   sudo fdisk -l



3. Create a mount point somewhere:

   mkdir ~/mnt/external



4. Run the following in a console (shell):

   sudo fuseext2 -o ro,allow_other /dev/sdb1 ~/mnt/external



5. Browse to the mount point using your file manager of choice. Use fusermount -u to unmount when you're done:

   sudo fusermount -u ~/mnt/external



Notes:

• The permissions on the external drive may not allow a normal user on the host computer access to all of the files. The easiest way around this is to copy the files somewhere else from inside a root shell (sudo -s), then change the permissions on the copies to (at least) 755 (rwxr-xr-x) for folders and 644 (rw-r--r--) for files.


• I did not test fuse-ext2's experimental read/write support, which is enabled using -o rw+ at the command line. Read the man page for more details.


• On a vanilla Debian system, you probably won't need to use sudo; just run those commands while logged in to a terminal as 'root.'


• For other Linux distros, use your package manager to search for "fuse" and/or "ext2" and install the appropriate package. (Debian "oldstable" [Etch] did not seem to have a fuse-ext2 package at all.) The other steps are the same, with the possible exception of the exact name of the "fuseext2" binary.