Case-Sensitive HFS+ for the Masses

Companies

October 26, 2003 - 9:46am

As root:

cd /System/Library/CoreServices/; cp SystemVersion.plist ServerVersion.plist

diskutil eraseDisk

You now have the option of making a case-sensitive HFS+ disk. This is the same trick that worked in Mac OS X 10.2 to enable journaling on the desktop OS. If you have a need for case-sensitivity, hate UFS, and don’t need Server, here ya go.

It would be a good idea to remove the ServerVersion.plist file when done. There’s no telling what else it enables that might not be in the standard version of Mac OS X.

October 27, 2003 - 2:43pm

Jason Pool said

The best way to create a case-sensitive HFS+ voume in Panther without messing with plist files and tricking the system into thinking its a server OS is the following way, which I use for creating such a volume using an already existing volume.

Run mount to see what device the volume is on.

Run Disk Utility and unmount the volume.

As root (sudo or su), run ‘newfs_hfs -v “Volume Name” -J -s /dev/devicename’

Mount the volume in Disk Utility again.

It won’t show it as case-sensitive in Disk Utility, but it works.

“man newfs_hfs” for more details.

October 27, 2003 - 2:45pm

Jason Pool said

And to clarify, “mount” and “newfs_hfs” need to be run from Terminal.app, or your favorite terminal.

October 27, 2003 - 3:00pm

codepoet said

I said in the article to use diskutil in Terminal. The “real” program works as well, I was just being overly geeky.

October 28, 2003 - 12:21pm

Ben said

Just FYI.. If you try to do this from Jaguar, the newfs_hfs command doesn’t yet support -s (case-sensitive) option. You can work around it easily enough, though, by sticking in your panther install disk and run it from /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ Disc\ 1/sbin/newfs_hfs .. yadda yadda.

Hope this helps someone else.

October 28, 2003 - 11:51pm

Ollivier Robert said

Can one do it on already initialised file-system à la enableJournal in diskutil? I’d like to have / as hfsx…

Thanks.

October 29, 2003 - 7:55am

codepoet said

Nah, this requires a reformat.

November 23, 2003 - 10:07pm

Arne Wichmann said

well,

great hack, anyway, i had some problems:
in single user mode i formatted my disk case-sensitive
then i installed the system via my jaguar cd-1
the reboot came – and there was no bootable system…

anyone got any idea?

November 26, 2003 - 5:37am

Ben said

Arne,

That’s the exact same behavior I saw when I attempted this initially.. I was never able to actually install the system from the Panther CDs. I ended up 1) installing on a normal, journalled hfs+ formatted drive 2) imaging that install via firewire target mode 3) running the newfs_hfs command off of the Panther installer CD to create the journalled, case sensitive hfs+ partition 4) restore the image back onto the drive. I’ve not had any trouble since then, but it WAS a pita. Maybe someone here will enlighten me, but I sure couldn’t make it work in any kind of straightforward way.