IEEE 1394 (FireWire) is a type of connection for various platforms, designed for high-speed serial data input and output. It is commonly used for connecting digital devices such as digital cameras and camcorders. Apple implemented it for connecting hard drives.
In this post I describe how to configure a FireWire disk to connect it to my Mac Mini running Gentoo Linux. First, the Linux Kernel needs to be prepared to support the FireWire driver.
Device Drivers --->
IEEE 1394 (FireWire) support --->
<*> FireWire driver stack
<*> OHCI-1394 controllers
<*> Storage devices (SBP-2 protocol)
Device Drivers --->
SCSI device support --->
<*> SCSI device support
<*> SCSI disk support
Compile and install the new kernel, reboot the machine, and then prepare the /etc/make.conf file. Portage has a global USE flag ieee1394 that enables FireWire support in other software packages. By activating it, the library sys-libs/libraw1394 will be installed.
USE="... ieee1394 ..."
With the new USE flag active, we recompile the system:
# emerge -DuvNp system world
From this point on you can connect the FireWire disk to the Mac – it should recognize it as just another disk. During boot, this is what you see in “dmesg”:
[ 8.967388] firewire_core 0000:05:00.0: created device fw1: GUID 00d0b802e0009568, S800
[ 9.199443] firewire_sbp2 fw1.0: logged in to LUN 0000 (0 retries)
[ 9.205079] scsi 3:0:0:0: Direct-Access External RAID 0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
[ 9.205249] sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 9.209223] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] 3907029168 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB)
[ 9.212173] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 9.212180] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 10 00 00 00
[ 9.214408] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Cache data unavailable
[ 9.214414] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 9.224797] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Cache data unavailable
[ 9.224806] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 9.227352] sdc: [mac] sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4
[ 9.237568] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Cache data unavailable
[ 9.237578] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 9.239442] sd 3:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
In my case I’m going to use this disk to access an HFS+ partition from my Mac Mini that I had created some time ago.