How to Mount EXT4 Linux Partition on Mac

Someday I have found problem on My Mac, I can't mount my external hard-drive with Extended 4 (Ext 4) Partition. All my backup files saved in the external hard-drive. Mac just running well FAT partition and Mac-Journal. For NTFS just for ReadOnly, so we can't write into NTFS partition. Finally I try to search tool or application for mounting this partition. And I have found tools named MacFuse and FuseExt2.

What is MacFuse ?


MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X's native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. It is used as a software building block by dozens of products.

As a user, installing the MacFUSE software package will let you use any 3rd-party file system written atop MacFUSE.

As a developer, you can use the MacFUSE SDK to write numerous types of new file systems as regular user-mode programs. The content of these file systems can come from anywhere: from the local disk, from across the network, from memory, or any other combination of sources. Writing a file system using MacFUSE is orders of magnitude easier and quicker than the traditional approach of writing in-kernel file systems. Since MacFUSE file systems are regular applications (as opposed to kernel extensions), you have just as much flexibility and choice in programming tools, debuggers, and libraries as you have if you were developing standard Mac OS X applications.

In more technical terms, MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above). It provides multiple APIs, one of which is a superset of the FUSE (File-system in USEr space) API that originated on Linux. Therefore, many existing FUSE file systems become readily usable on Mac OS X.

The MacFUSE software consists of a kernel extension and various user-space libraries and tools. It comes with C-based and Objective-C based SDKs. If you prefer another language (say, Python or Java), you should be able to create file systems in those languages after you install the relevant language bindings yourself.

To see some examples of MacFUSE at work, see the videos linked on the right.

The MacFUSE source repository contains source code for several exciting and useful file systems for you to browse, compile, and build upon, such as sshfs, procfs, AccessibilityFS, GrabFS, LoopbackFS, SpotlightFS, and YouTubeFS. For further information about MacFuse you can find here

What is Fuse-Ext2 ?

Fuse-ext2 is a ext2 filesystem (ext2fs/ext3fs) support for mac os x, with both read and write support. fuse-ext2 is written for mounting linux ext2 filesystem from mac osx (macfuse ext2), since source is os independent you can use it on unix distros. and of course fuse-ext2 works on linux (fuse ext2).

Fuse-ext2 software is based on both ntfs-3g, and ext2fuse packages. all operating system stuff is handled by fuse (linux) / macfuse (mac os x), please be sure that you have valid fuse package before using fuse-ext2. More about Fuse-Ext2 you can read it here

So, How to mount the EXT partition ?

1. Download and Install MacFuse on your Mac
2. Download and Install Fuse-Ext2 on your Mac
3. Restart your Mac, and connect your hard-drive external with EXT partition and you will see the Partition readable by your Mac. How a pitty, the partition just support for read-only. So we can't write in the EXT Partition.