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Mount a ext4 disk on a Mac#

Introduction#

I needed to mount an old ext4 usb stick on my Mac. and get the error below when inserting the disk into my mac image

Setup#

Install macfuse, using homebrew: 

brew install --cask macfuse

Manually clone and compile ext4fuse 

brew install pkg-config
git clone https://github.com/gerard/ext4fuse.git && cd "$(basename "$_" .git)"
make

Then create a mount point and mount your external hard drive. If you don't know which drive is the external drive, use diskutil list and figure out which one it is—in my case it was /dev/disk4 (external, physical): 

$ diskutil list 
/dev/disk4 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *5.0 TB    disk4
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data                         5.0 TB    disk4s1
Create a mount point for the disk, and then attempt mounting it there: 
mkdir ~/ext4_mount
sudo ./ext4fuse /dev/disk4s1 ~/ext4_mount -o allow_other

Allow the mount image

You will now get security errors. Click on "Open System Settings" image

Click on "Enable System Extentions..." image

You will be prompted to reboot image

Once rebooted you will be able to mount the disk with: 

sudo ./ext4fuse /dev/disk4s1 ~/ext4_mount -o allow_other

To unmount when done run: 

sudo umount ~/ext4_mount