Since I installed Panther, I was unable to read anything except very short files from my USB disk: the "Copy" progress indicator did not appear, and every attempt to access the USB drive would freeze the Finder (and everything would "unfreeze" as soon as I removed the USB disk). Initially I believed the upgrade had done something that rendered my (non Mac certified) disk incompatible, but a simple
dd if=/dev/disk1 of=/tmp/x bs=1M
verified that the drive worked perfectly. Even the ancient mtools, once compiled, were able to read from the disk without any difficulty. So what next?
% sudo sh
% cd /tmp
% gzcat /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ Disc\ 1/System/Installation/
Packages/Essentials.pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz | pax -r '*msdosfs*'
% mv /System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext ~/
% chown -R root:wheel /tmp/System
% mv /tmp/System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext /System/Library/Extensions
% rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
% exit
NOTE: The gzcat line has been split into two for easier reading. Remove the line break such that Packages comes immediately after the Installation/ bit on the previous line.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031109092020442