Hi. Here is a package that I'm working on and that is quite certainly of interest to those that work with PowerPC (and now, even Intel machines, as Apple has gone x86-64 now) machines and Linux.
If you want to help, don't be afraid. I am open to all suggestions and I sincerely hope to have this package uploaded soon. It is long overdue (since the death of Jens, which used to maintain a lot of packages for PowerPC in Linux). Having filesystem diagnostic and repair tools is a handy way to use HFS+ filesystems with the Linux kernel (which, BTW, already provides HFS+ support out-of-the-box). Summarizing, if you are interested in what is written below, please let me know and I will try to shape the package as well as I can. Hope this helps, Rogério Brito. P.S.: Please, keep the Cc:, as I'm currently not following the PowerPC mailing list nor Debian User. I may subscribe to debian-powerpc in the near future, as I want to get my iBook running Linux, but Ubuntu has dropped support for that platform as they saw that there were not many downloads of the PowerPC releases. :-( ----- Forwarded message from Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- From: Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Debian Bug Tracking System <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Bug#433168: ITP: hfsprogs -- mkfs and fsck for HFS and HFS+ file systems Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:41:25 -0300 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-11) Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Rogério Brito <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Package name : hfsprogs Version : 332 Upstream Author : Apple Computer Inc. * URL : http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.4/ * License : APSL 2.0 Programming Lang: C Description : mkfs and fsck for HFS and HFS+ file systems This is taken from closed bug report at <http://bugs.debian.org/229769>. It seems that the package never actually materialized itself unfortunately. :-( - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The HFS+ file system used by Apple Computer for their Mac OS is now supported by the Linux kernel. I've had ample experience with the mkfs and fsck utilities for this file system in Linux, both from personal use and from reports of the users of my Debian package hfsplus. Right now, mkfs and fsck from this package are best described as nonexistent and totally unsuable, respectively. The upstream author has declared he is not going to develop these tools any further. So there goes another nice piece of free software. Of course, Apple provides mkfs and fsck for HFS+ with the Unix core of their operating system, Darwin. Experimental ports to Linux and FreeBSD exist, so I will start with the original Darwin source and these ports. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For those needing the executables, the best option up to now has been following <http://www.debian-administration.org/users/lee/weblog/21>, but a proper Debian package would be, of course, the preferred solution. There are more reasons for having this package in the archive, namely: As I see it, HFS+ seems to be a good compromise to carry files between MacOS X and Linux Machines (and Linux has already gotten hfsplus support in the kernel for a long time). HFS+ doesn't suffer the problems of FAT32 like: * huge space waste (in slack space as devices grow faster); * ability to create files that are more than 4GB in size (especially good for those working with multimedia and that need to carry large ISO files); * ability to use case sensitivity (but I don't know if this is already supported by the Linux Kernel); * ability to be a journaled filesystem (idem); * ability to use uid's ang gid's on the filesystem. Among others that I don't know. I plan on getting the newest changes/patches that I can, especially from other distributions, especially from gentoo (which already seems to have such HFS+ utilities available to their users). I think that Debian users in general (since Macs have gone ix86-64 and have also been available under PowerPC for ages) would benefit greatly from a filesystem that is not as limited as FAT32 as pointed out above. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (900, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.21.5-1 (SMP w/1 CPU core; PREEMPT) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=pt_BR (charmap=ISO-8859-1) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED],ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8 http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Rogério Brito : [EMAIL PROTECTED],ime.usp}.br : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8 http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito : http://meusite.mackenzie.com.br/rbrito Projects: algorithms.berlios.de : lame.sf.net : vrms.alioth.debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]