How To Mount Dmg Files On Mac

So you’re running Linux on your computer, maybe Ubuntu, and you have some files with the .dmg extension. In this guide, we’re going to talk about how to open, mount, extract, and otherwise get your files from these pesky DMG images. You could always just extract the files on a Mac, then transfer them back to your Linux machine. But if you really want to do this on Linux, without having to rely on Mac, here’s how to do it.

Nov 16, 2018  Follow the steps below to convert your disk image files: Step 1. Launch Disk Utility in Mac from Applications Utilities. Open a Finder window and double-click on the DMG file to mount it. You should be able to see it on the left panel in Disk Utility. Right-click the DMG file in the left panel and select 'Convert'. By the way, one of the most difficult work for the users of macOS Catalina 10.15 is Developer Account. If you want to download macOS Catalina DMG file, in that case, you must pay money for the Developer Account. After downloading macOS Catalina you can install and get a better experience by installing on your computer PC-Hackintosh. Mar 05, 2016  Today I will be showing you how to mount and unmount a.dmg file on your mac computer! It is very simple and easy to do! When you download a.DMG file.

What are DMG image files?

Simply put, it’s a kind of image file. But not an image like a jpeg is an image. DMG is Apple’s proprietary disk image format, native to Mac OS X. There are actually a whole bunch of different types, format and options within this format. There are options for encryption, compression, and different kinds of partition schemes, among others. Unfortunately, this can make things pretty confusing when we’re trying to gain access to the data contained in one of these images.

DMG images are typically a kind of Universal Disk Image Format (UDIF), although there are others, namely NDIF and SPARSE. Although the .dmg file extension is usually used, they can also sometimes have an .img extension, or in some cases no extension at all. Their MIME type is application/x-apple-diskimage.

The HFS/HFS+ (Mac OS Extended/Journaled) file system is typically used in DMGs. However, this isn’t always the case. You may also sometimes find FAT and ExFAT files systems, as well as variations on HFS.

Does my system support DMG?

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome when trying to work with DMG files is working with the HFS file system (Mac OS Extended). Linux supports HFS through the “hfs” and “hfsplus” kernel modules.

There’s an easy way to test if your system has these kernel modules. Plug in a USB drive formatted with the Mac OS Extended file system. If your particular distribution doesn’t have the appropriate modules, you will likely get an error message. On Ubuntu, you’ll get a popup window declaring “Ubuntu: Unable to mount '.

Alternatively, we can see if the kernel module files are present with find:

We want to see two files: “hfs.ko” and “hfsplus.ko”. If find doesn’t return these files, your system probably doesn’t support HFS.

You could also try “modinfo”: modinfo hfs and modinfo hfsplus should return something like:

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If you get 'modinfo: ERROR: Module hfsplus not found' your system doesn’t have these modules.

Not all Linux kernels and distributions support HFS. This is especially the case for certain distributions that are a few years old. If you have kernel support for HFS, great! If not, don’t worry. There are still ways to extract data from your DMG files. While it’s nice to have the option to mount the images we’re working with, this is really the only functionality we’re losing without having the hfs and hfsplus modules. The two programs we’re going to use later on (P7ZIP and dmg2img) do not require kernel support to function.

How To Mount Dmg File On Mac

What kinds of DMG images can be opened in Linux?

This guide is about how to open, mount, and extract files from read/write, read only, and compressed DMG image files. The following partition schemes have all been tested with the techniques discussed here.

  • Apple Partition Map
  • CD/DVD (partitioned)
  • CD/DVD (partitioned) with ISO data
  • Hard disk
  • Master Boot Record Partition Map
  • No partition map

This guide does not cover how to handle sparse disk images (.sparseimage), sparse bundle disk images (.sparsebundle), or CD/DVD masters. DMG images with partition scheme types of “CD/DVD” and “GUID Partition Map” do not appear to work with the techniques described here.

Option 1: Mount the DMG

If the Linux distribution you’re on has HFS support in the kernel (Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS supports it), it’s pretty easy to just mount the DMG image:

We’re using “sudo” because we need root privileges to mount things. The HFS+ file system type is specified with “-t hfsplus”. The “/mnt” at the end of the command specifies where we’re mounting the image.

Unmount the image with sudo umount /mnt

If you get a wrong fs type message like the one below, it means the DMG file is either of an unsupported type, or it’s compressed. Unsupported images include sparse images, sparse disk bundles, CD/DVD masters, and images with partition schemes of the CD/DVD or GUID Partition Map types.

Use “file” to learn a little more about the image file:

If you get image.dmg: x86boot sector that means it’s probably using a GUID Partition Map and isn’t supported. This isn’t good, however, it’s also not too terribly common.

What’s more common is to see something like this:

If mounting isn’t working, and this is what you’re seeing with “file image.dmg”, then you’re luck!. Our problems are being caused by compression. Linux doesn’t like to mount compressed DMG images. To get around this little obstacle, we’ll use dmg2img (see below).

Option 2: Use dmg2img for compressed images

So you have a DMG image that you can’t mount because it’s compressed. You’ve done “file compressed_image.dmg” and you got “compressed_image.dmg: bzip2 compressed data”. The fix? That’s easy: use dmg2img to convert it to an uncompressed image. Once you run the image through dmg2img you should be able to mount it no problem.

Don’t have dmg2img? It’s usually pretty easy to get using your distribution’s package management. On Ubuntu, you’d do:

Using dmg2img isn’t very difficult. Type “dmg2img” into the command line followed by the name of the DMG file you want to decompress. The Mac OS X version of Firefox is a good example of a compressed DMG file.

Now mount the resulting .img file:

Option 3: Extract DMG contents with P7ZIP

P7ZIP is awesome. It’s the Linux/BSD version of 7-Zip. Check out their SourceForge page here With it you can literally extract files from any kind of image or archive. Just kidding… It doesn’t really work with every format conceivable. However, it can handle (in alphabetical order): ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z. Impressed? I certainly am!

Installing p7zip is pretty easy using your distribution’s package management system. On Ubuntu with apt-get:

In addition to being able to extract data from compressed and uncompressed images alike, P7ZIP doesn’t require the HFS kernel modules at all. In the example below, we’re going to extract all of the files from “Firefox 33.1.1.dmg”. When we’re done, we’ll have a tidy little folder called “Firefox”.

Invoke P7ZIP to extract archives and images with “7z x”.

Notice that 7z extracted three files: “0.ddm”, “1.Apple_partition_map”, and “2.hfs”. To actually get to the files, we’ll need to run 7z again on “2.hfs”.

We picked “2.hfs” because it was the biggest of the three, meaning it was probably the one with the data. Simple but effective logic. After a few moments, you should have a folder called “Firefox” with all of the files from the original DMG.

One of the most common mistakes I see among new Mac users is fumbling with how to install new software. The process for installing new applications on your Mac can be confusing at first because it differs greatly from Windows’ software installation process. Nevertheless, the Mac method of installing software is actually quite simple and intuitive once you are accustomed to it. If your desktop is littered with DMG files and white “drive”-looking icons, read on!

What are .DMG Files?

DMG stands for Disk Image, and is a format commonly used to distribute files and applications among Apple computers. A DMG file is like a virtual DVD or hard drive. They can be “mounted” on your Mac in order to work with their contents, or even burned to an actual physical disc.

In order to understand the concept of a DMG disk image, think of a storage volume such as a CD, DVD, hard drive, or external drive. A DMG file is like one of these devices in that it serves as a means to encapsulate documents, images, software, and other files. The difference is that with a DMG, there is no physical storage medium. There is only the DMG file, which can be written to a hard drive, burned to a CD or DVD, or sent over the Internet.

In order to work with the contents of a DMG file, you must mount the the disk image to your system. This may sound daunting, however “mounting” a DMG file with Mac OS X is no more complicated than double-clicking it’ icon. The operating system will load the load image and place a new icon both on your desktop, and in the sidebar of the Finder. The icon will have the same name as the DMG, and you’ll be able to browse through its contents like any other folder.

Once you are done working with the contents of the file, you will want to remove or “unmount” it from your system. Do this by opening the Finder and clicking the eject icon next to the virtual drive’s icon. Or, go to the Desktop, click once on the icon, and press CMD+E.

Software installation with Mac OS X is very different than in the Windows world. On a Windows PC you run an installer, tick off a few checkboxes, and wait for the progress meter to reach completion. There usually is no such “installation wizard” on a Mac &emdash; you simply drag and drop the program into your computer’s “Applications” directory. The trick is that most Mac applications are distributed as images called DMG files, and many new Mac users end up running applications directly from the image instead of installing them to the “Applications” directory.

Enough explanation, here’s how to install an OS X app from a DMG file:

  1. Find the downloaded file, which usually ends up in your Desktop or Downloads folder.
  2. Double-click the .DMG file to mount it. A new Finder window showing its contents should appear.
    • If the window also contains a shortcut icon to “Applications”, drag and drop the app onto the shortcut.
    • If not, double-click the mounted volume on your desktop and drag the app icon from there to the “Applications” icon in the Finder sidebar.

Further Explanation

Alright, that was the abridged version. Here’s the long version. I’ve just downloaded the DeskLickr application, and the DeskLickr_1.2.dmg is sitting on my desktop. I double-click it and a new icon labeled “DeskLickr 1.2” appears on my desktop. Here’s what my desktop looks like at this point:

Since most of the time a new Finder window also pops up when the image is ready for use, this one is now sitting on my desktop:

Different applications are going to show you slightly different Finder windows. Each application’s designers like to add their own artwork. Glitter aside, most applications are trying to tell you the same thing. See the arrow pointing from the DeskLickr icon to the “Applications’ shortcut? It’s telling you to drag and drop the icon into that folder. Once you’ve done so, the app will be installed.

If a program doesn’t provide a shortcut to the Applications folder, you’ll need to pop open a new Finder window. Press CMD+N to open a new window, then drag the program over to “Applications” in the left-hand side of the window.

Once the new program is installed it’s time to do some house cleaning. You no longer need the disk image you downloaded, so follow these steps:

  1. Close any Finder windows that have been left open.
  2. Eject the disk image (not the .DMG file). Click on its desktop icon, then press CMD+E.
  3. Delete the .DMG file by dragging it to the trash.

That’s it! Your new Mac application is ready to use. But wait…

How To Mount Dmg Files On Mac Pc

Bonus Tip: Add Your New Application to the Dock

I knew you were going to ask, so I figured I would cut you off at the pass. In order to add the new application to the dock, follow these steps:

How To Mount A Dmg File In Mac Terminal

  1. Open up a new Finder window.
  2. Click on “Applications”.
  3. Locate your new program’s icon.
  4. Drag the icon to your Dock, and drop it wherever you like.