Linux on the Mac — state of the union [LWN.net]

Linux on the Mac — state of the union

Posted Dec 12, 2016 12:51 UTC (Mon) by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
In reply to: Linux on the Mac — state of the union by ismail
Parent article: Linux on the Mac — state of the union

I recall reading somewhere that Windows will only recongize a UDF filesystem if it's on the first partition on a USB disk, and Mac OS only recognizes it if the whole disk is itself formatted with UDF.

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Linux on the Mac — state of the union

Posted Dec 12, 2016 15:07 UTC (Mon) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

This is a problem if you want to use the same disk on Windows, OS/X and Linux. There is an ugly hack to make the disk usable on all three systems: create the file system on the whole disk, then write a partition table with a partition that starts at sector 0. The UDF file system leaves some space unused at the start of the container it is in (disk or partition), which can be used for the MBR containing the partition table. This way the UDF file system appears to be both on the whole disk and in the first partition.

I found this solution on a blog a long time ago, and haven't tried it recently so I don't know if it still works. Even without the trick, the UDF disk should be portable between Linux and one of Windows (partitioned) and Mac (whole disk).

https://web.archive.org/web/20130313095817/http://sipa.ul...