Thanks for trying and I don't mean to be a failure really
I had tried the umask=000 and with 4 0's too. I tried those entries in fstab to no avail here's the results:

"/dev/scd0 /mnt/hfs auto defaults,ro,noauto,users,noexec,umask=000 0 0"
in fstab gives this:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: I could not determine the filesystem type, and none was specified

and " /dev/scd0 /mnt/hfs hfs defaults,ro,noauto,users,noexec,umask=000 0 0"
gives this:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/scd0,
or too many mounted file systems

Meanwhile back at the terminal I get this:


john@ixan:~$ hmount /dev/scd0
/dev/scd0: contains 1 HFS partition
Volume name is "MacAddict 29" (locked)
Volume was created on Wed Oct 7 17:01:31 1998
Volume was last modified on Thu Nov 5 14:55:59 1998
Volume has 0 bytes free
john@ixan:~$ ls -l /dev/hdc
brwxrw---- 1 root disk 22, 0 Apr 14 2001 /dev/hdc

Is it really hopeless to mount or I should say access hfs on x86 linux??

Follow-up: Maybe this is a clue, but I'm not sure, anyway I'm using a desktop device icon in kde and I can select the entry I created for hfs in the device tab, but I noticed that after I click on the icon to open and get the error messages above when I look at the device in properties it has defaulted back to the /dev/scd0 /mnt/dvd that the knoppix install set up.