just got new macbook

[blue4paper]

Well just got a macbook from my school, as in just for the school year nothing permenant.

Anyways they said we can do whatever we want with the remaining 120 gig of the hard drive. And so i was planning on putting my music.

Heres the problem, since our school board is lame, they added admin rights, and we only have user rights. So this means no file sharing, installing software and i tried booting in ubuntu but everything was "read only". (Meaning i connected my external hard drive to the live cd ubuntu on my mac, and when i tried transfering over it said "read only")

I have a 80 gig external hard drive but it doesn't show or make any sounds when i plug it in. But booting in ubuntu i dont even need the software (which was required for visibility in windows) for it to recognize the external hard drive. Their both unix based so why isn't mac detecting it? Is it part of user rights?

Also i would do all this vis thumb drive but the biggest one we have is 512 mb , and i'm not too enthusiastic about transfering 20 gig over a 512mb thumb drive.

Any ideas or better methods of transfering files? Like i dont even know how i'd get a movie on this mac lol.

Also, any dumb questions i may have asked is because i've really never used mac much and its kinda hard finding good ressources on the net for mac that i need.

Anyways thanks

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If you can, you have to disable journaling. Mac (HFS+) partitions can only be mounted as read/write under Ubuntu if they are non-journaled. Open Disk Utility (open Finder, then from the menu bar, Go -> Utilities, Disk Utility) and pick your boot partition. Then you can click "Disable Journaling". Now go into Ubuntu again and it should be able to do read/write. However, since OSX is a Unix system like Linux (Ubuntu), it has folder permissions, and since Ubuntu is also a Unix-like system, it will follow the drive's permissions. If you can, set the permissions using OSX before going into Ubuntu, though I had issues getting Ubuntu to access my home directory in OSX even though I set everyone to read and write, so I put my files on the root of the OSX partition using OSX then was able to copy them off via Ubuntu, but I didn't try going from Ubuntu to OSX partition.

I too just started Mac (installed it on my PC) and figured the HFS stuff out pretty fast when I couldn't fix a broken install via Ubuntu.

EDIT:

I'm in Ubuntu now, I have my OSX HFS+ partition set to non-journaling, and it is mounted r/w. However, the root folder of the drive has blocked due to permissions. I found that the /Users/Shared folder is open to write to using Ubuntu, so try writing to it from Ubuntu (you still have to turn journaling off, but /Users/Shared seems to have the right permissions to write to).

 

[blue4paper]

Ah well thanks for the quick reply CalcProgrammer1, although i was excited with your reply.... i cant access disk utilities lol i dont have permissions to it.

Are there any other alternatives?

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If they blocked you out it's probably because they don't want you copying a bunch of stuff to it. However, if you're sure they'd be OK with you copying in some music, try asking an admin to open the permissions on the drive.

Or, if you want to be evil and defy them, you could just go in Ubuntu, fire up GParted, obliterate the existing partition, and reinstall from scratch using an OSX disc, giving yourself master admin permissions and control over the whole PC...but I doubt admins would be too happy about that

Chances are they've found a way to lock down everything that lets you access the drive. If you could get some sort of Windows environment on it you could try MacDrive (a program for Windows that lets you access, read, and write Mac partitions as Windows drives). If you have access to the hard drive (as in, you can take the drive out of the PC) you could probably stick it in a Windows desktop and do this (new laptops have SATA drives that work with desktop connectors without an adapter). You could also try guessing the root password. Often times admins use common words or obvious things for their pw's so try a few common things. If not, you may be able to use some other tools to read out the admin password and then log in (you have entire drive read access in Ubuntu probably). You may also be able to mount the drive ignoring permissions, not sure if that's possible though.

 

[Kharn]

Do you have the system recovery disk's an a spare hard drive?

 

[blue4paper]

I dont have any recovery disk, but i'll make them.

And i have a spare hard drive.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If you have an OSX DVD (at least if the official one is anything like the hacked one I used to install on PC), it has the disk utility on the DVD. Boot up the DVD and instead of clicking through the install process, just go up to Utilities -> Disk Utility. You should then be able to disable journaling. If that fails, you can do evil and wipe the drive and reinstall, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that on a PC that you don't own.

 

[blue4paper]

If you have an OSX DVD (at least if the official one is anything like the hacked one I used to install on PC), it has the disk utility on the DVD. Boot up the DVD and instead of clicking through the install process, just go up to Utilities -> Disk Utility. You should then be able to disable journaling. If that fails, you can do evil and wipe the drive and reinstall, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that on a PC that you don't own.

I dont have the osx dvd, and i signed a contract saying i couldn't mess with the OS =/. I'm so limited and its lamesauce.