MacFUSE is being discontinued, what now?

Discussion in 'Installation and Configuration of Parallels Desktop' started by JackMm, Sep 13, 2011.

  1. JackMm

    JackMm Member

    Messages:
    38
    http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23729/macfuse

    Parallels installed MacFUSE on my system. What happens if I switch to FUSE4X now? Will that hurt Parallels 6 or Parallels 7 at all or can Parallels already work with FUSE4X just fine as is?
     
  2. PatrickJ

    PatrickJ Member

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    94
    As Parallels is probably the only reason for needing Fuse, I'd leave alone MacFuse as that is what Parallels is using. They'll sort out their upgrade path.

    That being said.. try it and see what happens. The worst that could go wrong is a lot of reinstalling :)
     
  3. JackMm

    JackMm Member

    Messages:
    38
    Can anyone from Parallels PLEASE give a legitimate answer on this? PLEASE?




    PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEASE?
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2011
  4. Sven G

    Sven G Member

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    64
  5. Specimen

    Specimen Product Expert

    Messages:
    3,242
    Since FUSE4X doesn't offer MacFUSE compatibility (code has to be recompiled against FUSE4X), I just went ahead and uninstalled MacFUSE and replaced it for OSXFUSE with MacFUSE compatibility layer, let's see how it behaves, but from my understanding Parallels only uses Fuse to mount NTFS volumes of VMs in Finder with read and write access, which is not something that I normally use as I don't like to see OSX's hidden files in Windows.

    I personally hope Parallels goes ahead and replaces MacFUSE for OSXFUSE.

    Another important issue is that MacFUSE's built-in uninstaller fails silently and doesn't actually uninstall MacFUSE, this happens on 10.6.8 and also probably in Lion, Parallels should take care of this.
    OSXFUSE uninstalls MacFUSE if you select the compatibility mode (didn't test this as I already had MacFUSE removed by Tuxera's MacFUSE uninstaller).

    EDIT: Strangely enough, without MacFUSE or OSXFUSE installed I can still mount NTFS Volumes from virtual disk in read and write mode. I wonder if FUSE is only used for mounting NTFS volumes of Bootcamp partitions?
    EDIT2: Mounting Bootcamp disk on mac desktop works (by works I mean that not only does it mount but I can write to it) without macfuse installed, which makes me wonder why do we need to have MacFUSE in PDM. Unless for MacFUSE to stop working, besides uninstalling it (successfully) the computer also needs to be rebooted?
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2011
  6. Specimen

    Specimen Product Expert

    Messages:
    3,242
    I just discovered why mounting NTFS volumes in Parallels works when MacFUSE is not installed. Because Parallels NO LONGER uses MacFUSE! It uses a modified version called prlufs.fs. A brand new install of Parallels 7 doesn't install MacFUSE, the reason why we have MacFuse in our systems is because older versions of Parallels (up to 6?) installed it, but upgrading to 7 DOESN'T REMOVE it, and using MacFUSE own uninstaller doesn't remove it also.

    The good thing is that I finally got rid of those macfuse files in /usr/local/ that I never liked (personal pet peeve).
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2011
  7. Specimen

    Specimen Product Expert

    Messages:
    3,242
    So, to answer everybody's question, if you are running the latest version of PDM7 you can safely remove MacFUSE and you don't need to install OSXFUSE or FUSE4X (unless you need it for something else, in which case they are safe to install and they don't interfere with Parallels, since Parallels uses it's own version).

    To uninstall MacFUSE, since the uninstaller will likely leave the files, and Parallels uninstaller doesn't deal with MacFUSE. you might upgrade to Tuxera's MacFUSE (2.2) ( http://www.tuxera.com/mac/macfuse/MacFUSE-Tuxera-2.2.dmg ) and then use its uninstaller which seems to work, or upgrade to OSXFUSE with MacFUSE compatibility layer (it will automatically uninstall MacFUSE), and then remove OSXFUSE.
    To remove the preferences pane in System preference, right click on it and select remove.
     
  8. JackMm

    JackMm Member

    Messages:
    38
    Thank you, Specimen for your help. I was wondering if Parallels 7 installed MacFUSE or not; now I know! This is really good to know for sure and thank you very much for the advice in how to remove it from the system.
     

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