Games - .dmg

	Games - .dmg

A file with the extension .dmg uses a disk image format commonly found on Mac OS X. The format allows secure password protection as well as file compression and hence serves both security and file distribution functions. Its most common function is the distribution of software over the Internet. When opened, DMG files are "mounted" as a drive within the Finder.

DMG files can be easily created (with or without encryption) using utilities that are included in OS X: Disk Utility in Mac OS X v10.4 and 10.3 or Disk Copy in earlier versions. These utilities also use DMG files as images for burning CDs and DVDs. DMG files may also be created via commandline using hdiutil create.

DMG file MIME type is Content-Type: application/octet-stream. As many web publishers tend to be less knowledgeable about Apple-specific file types, this MIME type is not set, often resulting in the user experience of attempting to download DMG files as text directly to the browser window, forcing the use of control-click or a similar workaround to download the file. For this reason, DMG files are often distributed as bzip2 (.dmg.bz2) or ZIP (.dmg.zip) files. These wrappers do not really compress the file any further, but merely help the download to go more smoothly.

Software

command line converter
free Java port of dmg2iso supporting large files, and with minimal GUI
commercial tools
burning utility

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