Mount Mac Partition at Startup

[kennethsime]

As many of us dual-booters, I keep most of my files on my mac partition. Specifically, my music. One of my favorite things to do is to point Rhythmbox to my iTunes music folder, and just play from there. iTunes keeps it up to date/organized (I rip/add music on my mac partition), and when I'm on Ubuntu Rhythmbox keeps right up (mostly). However, I do have to manually mount my mac partition before Rhythmbox will play, and it seems to work better if I do it before I launch the application.

So, I ask: is there a simple, clean way to mount my mac partition at startup?

[renzokuken]

the easiest way is to add a mount point in your fstab file. this way, when ubuntu loads it automatically mounts the partition at your specified location everytime you boot.

sadly, having never done this for a mac partition (only for XP) i wouldnt know the settings you have to specify in the fstab file. that might be a start for some googling research.

failing that, could you not just create a script to run the mount commands you use now and set that script to execute on login?

sorry, not much help i know but it might be a start

[MisterGaribaldi]

Well... three things:

1. You need to install the HFS/HFS+ components to be able to access Mac-formatted partitions;
2. HFS+ Journaled is the default filesystem and has been since 10.3.
3. Linux HFS/HFS+ support does not include WRITE support for HFS+ Journaled filesystems.

So, the question here is do you need to be able to write data TO your Mac partition. At present, there's no really clean solution for this. I think that Journaling can be disabled on an HFS+ Journaled filesystem (making it capable of being written to) but I have no idea how to make that happen.

[pc_michael]

I do exactly the same thing you do, Kennethsime. Here's how I did it:

1. Create the folder where you want to mount the drive. I did mine at /media/MacintoshHD
2. Edit your fstab by opening Terminal and typing sudo gedit /etc/fstab
3. Add the following line at the end. Here my Mac partition is at /dev/sda2:
   
   

   /dev/sda2	/media/MacintoshHD	hfsplus	defaults	0	0

   **Note that the large spaces between those arguments are tabs**
   
4. Save your fstab and reboot
5. Profit

[rduplain]

1. Create the folder where you want to mount the drive. I did mine at /media/MacintoshHD
2. Edit your fstab by opening Terminal and typing sudo gedit /etc/fstab
3. Add the following line at the end. Here my Mac partition is at /dev/sda2:
   
   

   /dev/sda2	/media/MacintoshHD	hfsplus	defaults	0	0

I set my fstab slightly differently:

UUID=cea5d65a-62b5-33fa-b6a5-8c7426e66606 /media/MacintoshHD hfsplus defaults 0 0

If you only have one drive, it doesn't matter that much, but using UUIDs are unique to the drive and will be robust to drive additions, e.g., SD cards & USB drives.

You can find the UUID with ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/ and looking for the match to the target partition, in my case /dev/sda2. You can get a lot of information from gparted here if you don't know which partition you want (but do not to make partition edits!).

**Note that the large spaces between those arguments are tabs**

Spaces should work just as well as tabs.

Save your fstab and reboot

You could reboot, but you don't have to. After setting fstab:

sudo mount -a
ls /media/MacintoshHD/ # should show files

I recommend doing this to be sure that you set fstab correctly.

-Ron


PS - You might have to install the hfsplus package if mounting fails.

[kesiev]

Ow! This topic fits my recent needings too...
Is there a way to mount the unjournaled hfsplus partition at boot with read/write rights for users too? I'm able to write the partition but just as super user.