Access files on a Mac hard drive in Ubuntu

[tati]

I'm a new emigree from Mac OS X to Hardy Heron. All my Mac files are backed up to an external hard drive, and I no longer have access to Mac OS X. How do I get these files on to Hardy Heron? I get a permissions error when I mount the hard drive and copy files in Ubuntu. Will I have to upload all my files to FTP using a borrowed Mac and download them to Ubuntu?

[nikolaos]

You can copy everything from Terminal!!

cd /media
ls

find your hard drive. Enter and

cp filename destination || cp -r directory destination

then you can change the owner(in the new file which is in your hard drive) with chown

sudo chown user.user file

it is a little bit raw!!! But it works. Maybe a guru can give you a less complicated way of doing it

[tati]

I forgot to mention that I'm running Ubuntu on a PC, not a Mac. The files are on a Mac OS X hard drive, however.

[tiresia]

Have you tried to copy your files with "sudo cp filename…"?

[kosumi68]

From the posts so far, it is not clear if

1. Your mac drive (HFS+ filesystem) is accessible from your PC somehow.

2. You have managed to connect to the drive (mount command in linux, often automatic when running ubuntu)

[tati]

I am able to mount my Mac hard drive on my PC that is running Ubuntu. It shows up on the desktop as soon as I turn it on. I am not able to move or copy files between the hard drive and PC due to a permissions error.

I'm not sure what format the Mac hard drive is; I presume it's whatever the default for Mac OS X is since these are my backed up files from my old iMac. I want to move these files (about 120GB of movies and music) to my Ubuntu PC.

[flaggh]

Since your ubuntu uid most likely is not the same as your mac uid, you'll either have to change your ubuntu uid to your mac uid if you want to continue to use these hard drives as is. If all you're trying to do is copy the files to your ubuntu machine, I believe you should be able to just copy them as super user:

sudo cp /path/to/macdrives /home/user/newdirectory

[tati]

I'm able to copy files from my Mac hard drive to my Ubuntu desktop with that command but I still get the same error when I try to open the files:

The folder contents could not be displayed

You do not have the permissions necessary to view the contents of "folder".

[DonnieP]

I'm able to copy files from my Mac hard drive to my Ubuntu desktop with that command but I still get the same error when I try to open the files:

Use terminal to go to where the files are. If they're on your desktop and your username is tati, there's only files and not directories, and there's nothing else on your desktop that's not "yours," then:

cd ~/Desktop
sudo chown tati.tati *

[cyberdork33]

I think Donnie got it right. You get permissions errors because the files do not "belong to" your Ubuntu user, they belong to your OSX user. You have to change the permissions on the files to allow access by the new user. Since the old user no longer exists, you want to just change the ownership of the files to your new user. This can be done with the chown command as shown in the last post.