This is just a quick note on how to get NTFS with read & write access installed on Leopard, and also a neat trick called SSHFS which lets you mount a remote filesystem which you have ssh access to, as if it were a samba share or similar.

This makes it trivial to send files to work, uni, etc, using a provided ssh remote login.

Update

Well that (using macports) didn't go quite how I expected. SSHFS worked out of the box with macports, but ntfs-3g didn't, there was no automounting. Rather than chase a solution for this I decided to go with the supported OSX installers for each bit.

This actually led me to MacFusion for sshfs, which seems to be a superior solution anyway. Revised instructions follow.

This is just a quick note on how to get NTFS with read & write access installed on Leopard, and also a neat trick called SSHFS which lets you mount a remote filesystem which you have ssh access to, as if it were a samba share or similar.

This makes it trivial to send files to work, uni, etc, using a provided ssh remote login.

Disclaimer

This is a guide for how to quickly install these filesystems and the fuse api, though you do so at your own risk. Think about what it entails, and be sure to keep backups of anything important.

Install individually

This way will be a bit more work, and mean manual updates, but it will be better supported, and actually have some documentation.

MacFuse

Get the latest package and install it.

NTFS-3G for OSX

Get the latest package and install it. Reboot, now look at an NTFS drive (e.g. your Bootcamp partition) with 'get info' in finder, and it should say NTFS-3g (MacFUSE). You may also like to read the documentation provided.

SSHFS for OSX, MacFusion

Try this gui for ftp and ssh mounts.

Original, flawed instructions

These steps worked, but didn't have automounting, and using the above packages didn't recognise macports' macfuse install as being there, so I got rid of it.

Install with macports

I'm assuming you already have macports installed

sudo port install macfuse ntfs-3g sshfs sshfs-gui

Remove packages as you see fit.

Packages

macfuse this implements the api you need to run Linux fuse filesystems on OSX.

ntfs-3g is the bit that gives you read-write access on Microsoft's NTFS partitions, which is handy for removable hard drives. N.B. this way of installing ntfs-3g doesn't automount drives without further work.

sshfs is nice for remote locations you have ssh access to, but not a remote samba share - it lets you simulate a file system share via ssh. Nifty.

sshfs-gui found in Applications/MacPorts/sshfs will take your address and username to connect to via ssh, then prompt you for a password. Once this is done you'll see a new drive mount appear on the desktop or wherever you normally find them. You can right-click and eject this when you're done with it.

The alternative to this is using mount commands in the terminal.