Filesystem on external drive that is read/writable for both Mac & Linux?

Hello,

I have a home network of two Linux boxes and a MacBook. One of the Linux machines (Ubuntu) is also a fileserver where I keep my iTunes library and most of my iPhoto library. No prob. I've attached a 300GB external drive to this machine which I first formatted with the MacBook. (HFS+, 2 partitions, 75GB & 225GB) The 75GB partition currently contains a complete backup of the MacBook which I did before installing Leopard, the other partition is empty.

The Linux machines can see and read this drive, but can not write to it. Ideally, I'd like to dedicate the 75GB partition to the MacBook for Time Machine, and then use the 225GB partition as storage for all machines on the network. But as it's formatted now, the Linux boxes can't write to it.

The 75GB partition must remain formatted as HFS+ for it to work with Time Machine. Is it possible to use Disk Utility to format the 225GB partition with another filesystem that is read/writable for both Mac and Linux? Or is this best done in Linux with fdisk? (It's been awhile since I've used fdisk...)

Any tips/suggestions greatly appreciated!

Joe Nestlerode
www.nestlerode.org

ext3 i think.... but not sure

I think you can do it in Disk Utility, AFAIR, but wait until you get further confirmation from someone here who knows for sure.

Thats the problem. You can not use HFS+ or ext3 for the external drive. Both dont support each other. You can use NTFS. Linux supports it out of box. For mac you can write to NTFS with ntfs3g (free) or paragon ntfs(shareware). Alternatively FAT32 is supported natively on both. But I had some issues in getting mac write to FAT32. So I chose NTFS.

But TM partition needs to be on HFS+ only.