fsck.hfsplus command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix fsck.hfsplus command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

fsck.hfsplus: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: fsck.hfsplus: command not found

Solutions to fsck.hfsplus: command not found

How To Fix fsck.hfsplus: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu fsck.hfsplus is provided by hfsprogs package.

hfsprogs is:

The HFS+ file system used by Apple Computer for their Mac OS is supported by the Linux kernel. Apple provides mkfs and fsck for HFS+ with the Unix core of their operating system, Darwin.

This package is a port of Apple’s tools for HFS+ filesystems.

For users, HFS+ seems to be a good compromise to carry files between MacOS X and Linux Machines, as HFS+ doesn’t suffer the problems of FAT32 like:

  • huge space waste (in slack space as devices grow faster);
  • ability to create files that are more than 4GB in size (especially good for those working with multimedia and that need to carry large ISO files);
  • ability to use case preserving (and even sensitivity!);
  • ability to use uid’s and gid’s on the filesystem.

Users in general can enjoy such benefits since it is expected to have more HFS+ filesystems in use, as Apple has announced Macintoshes for ix86-64, besides the filesystem being already supported by PowerPC systems since the beginning.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install hfsprogs

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install hfsprogs.

sudo apt -y install hfsprogs

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install hfsprogs

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix fsck.hfsplus command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.