Mounting Linux ext partitions on OS X

I wanted to check some files on an SD Card formatted in ext that I had used on my Pi and wanted to check if I had left some files in the home dir before I reimaged it. OS X doesn’t support ext formatted drives by default, but you add support using OSXFuse.

  • Install Fuse for OS X
  • Install the ext plugin for Fuse
  • Find the partition you want to mount with: diskutil list
  • Make a mount point – not sure on Mac OS X where is the best place, but I added /mnt/sdcard
  • Mount with:


    [code]sudo fuse-ext2 /dev/disk1s2 /mnt/sdcard[/code]

  • (replace with the /dev/ to your device)

I’m not sure if it’s best practice on the Mac to mount with sudo, but this worked for me for what I needed to do. Fuse mounts on ext are r/o by default, but there is experimental r/w support that can be enabled, check the docs.

Done!

Installing Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint 17.1

Booting the Mint Live DVD on a HP Pavilion with an AMD Phenom quadcore, I get to the desktop but it starts lagging, and is barely responsive. Selecting the compatibility mode boot option gets me to a lower res desktop but without the lagging issue. After I installed to my hd using compatibility mode, when booting up for the first time I ran into exactly the same issue.

At the Grub menu, if I edit the boot option and add nomodeset, then again, I can boot into a low res with no lag. This desktop has a Nvidia graphics card, so I tried following the instructions here, but I couldn’t get these steps to work, every time I ran the Nvidia installer, it kept telling me that the nouveau drivers were still loaded.

This page suggested to install via ‘sudo apt-get install nvidia-304’ – this approach seemed to download all the deps, build local, install, setup and configure, all in one go. When I rebooted, all looked good, and no need to manually add the nomodeset at the grub menu. Success! So far very impressed with the slickness of the Mint Cinnamon desktop!