Mounting APFS Partition on Linux

Original Version: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/apfs-partition-mount

apfs-fuse

Installation

We’ll need to compile the driver from source. For that reason, we’ll need to download and install the dependencies first. So, let’s go ahead and install them using a package manager.

On Debian, Ubuntu, and Debian-based derivatives, we can use apt:

$ sudo apt install fuse libfuse3-dev bzip2 libbz2-dev cmake gcc g++ git libattr1-dev zlib1g-dev

Similarly, we can use yum for Fedora and RHEL distributions:

$ sudo apt install fuse fuse3 bzip2 cmake gcc g++ git libattr zlib

Next, let’s clone the repository into an empty directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse

Then, we initialize the submodule:

$ cd apfs-fuse && git submodule update --init

Now, we’re ready to compile the driver:

$ mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make

Alternatively, the driver is also available on the Fedora package repository under the canonical name apfs-fuse.

Once the driver is installed, let’s verify it:

$ whereis apfs-fuse
apfs-fuse: /usr/bin/apfs-fuse

Mounting APFS Drive

apfs-fuse follows the Linux convention for mounting and unmounting filesystems:

$ mount <DEVICE> <MOUNT_PATH>

With that in mind, let’s mount an APFS drive using the apfs-fuse helper:

$ apfs-fuse /dev/sdd1 /mnt/apfs-data

Similarly, we can specify the mount options using -o:

$ mount -o allowother /dev/sdd1 /mnt/apfs-data

Unmounting APFS Drive

In the same way, we can unmount the partition as root using umount:

$ umount /mnt/apfs-data

As a user, we can use the fusermount utility:

$ fusermount -u /mnt/apfs-data