macFuse use and uninstall for normal people

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hello,
I am a non-developer trying to read a windows-formatted drive on my MacBookPro 
running OSX 
10.4.11 and macFuse 0.2.2 and then NTFS-3G 1.0.

At the moment, MacFuse is not working and I am trying to uninstall it and 
re-install it.

The commands on the pages here don't work, and neither does the uninstaller in 
the package I 
have.  They both say that the filename (for the shell script or uninstaller 
program) is not found.  
Also, I found that the directory that your instructions is looking for is not 
exist.

To make this usable for normal people like myself, please could you:
- tell us if MacFuse is able to read/write normall Windows-formatted external 
drives from 
MaxOSX.
- give instructions for how a non-developer installs and uses MacFuse, without 
the terminal or a 
knowledge of unix.
- give instructions for non-developers to uninstall MacFuse, again without 
using the terminal or 
having a knowledge of UNIX.

Thanks,
Robyn Webb

Original issue reported on code.google.com by rnw...@mira.net on 30 Mar 2008 at 6:33

[GoogleCodeExporter]

How did you conclude that the uninstaller is not working? If the filename is 
not found, it's already uninstalled. If the directory doesn't 
exist, it's already uninstalled.

You need to realize that MacFUSE != ntfs-3g. MacFUSE is a set of software 
building blocks. It doesn't directly do anything at all for 
"normal" people. In particular, it doesn't have any NTFS functionality. 
Software written to make use of MacFUSE's building blocks (ntfs-
3g is one such software) is the one that you are talking about, but you are 
clumping everything together.

To answer your questions:

- No, MacFUSE is not able to read/write NTFS drives. MacFUSE is a generic 
driver that other software will use.
- Everyone installs MacFUSE the same way: double click on the installer package 
and click on the buttons when asked.
- Everyone uninstalls it the same way: single click on the Terminal icon and 
type that one line of text.

Your expectations of how "normal" software should be installed/uninstalled 
cannot extend to MacFUSE because it is not "normal" 
software. MacFUSE isn't an application--it's a loadable file system driver. You 
never use (well, cannot use) MacFUSE directly.

Also, there are no known issues in MacFUSE itself that can be fixed by 
uninstalling/reinstalling MacFUSE. If "it" is not working, there's 
likely to be some other issue.

Original comment by si...@gmail.com on 31 Mar 2008 at 5:31

• Changed state: Invalid

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi Singh,

It looked like the uninstaller didn't work because the script came back with an 
error message saying that it 
couldn't find the uninstall script file.

I'll get onto NTFS-3G.  thanks for clearing this up.

Original comment by rnw...@mira.net on 1 Apr 2008 at 10:45