Wintivity ™

File Systems tools for interoperability between Windows, Apple Macintosh, and Linux

Useful free tools (and good reading) for use in a heterogeneous [ Windows / Mac / Linux ] File System environment

Windows File System tools serving Mac

Services For Macintosh (SFM)

SFM was an effort by Microsoft supporting Mac integration into the Windows Network. SFM is available in Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server (but has been dropped from Windows 2008 Server). Services For Mac includes these three key Server services:

• File Server for Mac - checklist
• Print Server for Mac - checklist
• AppleTalk networking and routing - checklist

File Server for Mac - KB147438

File Server for Macintosh (FSM), which is part of SFM, allows Windows and Macintosh clients to create and open files on the same share by presenting the files to the clients with the naming conventions used by their operating systems.

Macintosh and Windows Server Integration - TechFAQ

The folks at TechFAQ have written an excellent article on Mac and Windows Server Integration. The article includes detail walkthroughs about activiting and administering verious Services For Macintosh features.

Also, here are genrally helpful tips on Performance Tuning Guidelines for Microsoft Services for Network File System

File System Tools from the Open Source Community

NTFS-3G

An NTFS driver for Mac OS X and Linux is NTFS-3G - ( also read the NTFS-3G FAQ )

The NTFS-3G driver is a freely and commercially available and supported read/write NTFS driver for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, NetBSD, Solaris, Haiku, and other operating systems. It provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000 and Windows Vista file systems. POSIX file system operations are supported, and full file ownership and permission support is available as well.

Mac File System software serving Windows

• HFSExplorer - by Erik Larsson - erik82 [at] kth (dot) se
• Mac OS X: About file system journaling - Apple Support

Linux File System software serving Windows and Apple Macintosh

• Explore2fs - Explore2fs for Windows is a WIN32 explorer for Linux ext2fs partitions. Full URL here http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs
• Ext2fxc - Ext2fxc for Apple Macintosh is an implementation of the Ext2 (Linux) file system for Mac OS X. Full URL here http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/

User Space File System software

• Linux - FUSE -  http://fuse.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/OperatingSystems
• Mac - MacFUSE - http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
• Windows - WinFUSE - http://www.suchwerk.net/sodcms_FUSE_for_WINDOWS.htm
• Windows - UniversalFUSE - http://www.eldos.com/cbfs/

Experiment with these File System resources in your heterogeneous environments. Please comment if you have more, better, or mo-better solutions.

Thanks.