[Sony Cross-Device General] linuxct:
OSX GUIDE

Step 1 - Extract the SIN we need

Using your favourite archive manager (UnRarX, ZipEg, etc), open the FTF you want to extract the files from. (FYI: an FTF is just a Zip file with renamed extension)

Now copy/extract the SIN you want to unpack to a folder of your preference.

Step 2 - Dump the SIN

I'll take into account you already had installed Flashtools and Java JRE, in which case I highly encourage you to update both to the latest version available.

Now, open Flashtools. Click on Tools, Sin Editor. Hit the [...] and locate the SIN you previously extracted. Now, hit the [Extract Data] button. After a couple of minutes the bar should start running.

Once finished, you can have 2 kind of files: a .yaffs2 or a .ext4/.ext3/.ext2 file, which require different procedures on how to see it's contents.

Step 3.a - Convert the file to a readable format - UnYaffs2

If the file you get is a .yaffs2 format file, you're going to need an extra tool to extract it. For doing so, you are going to need the unyaffs2 tool.

You can download a pre-compiled binary from here, or you can install your own using Brew. From a Terminal (Command+Space, then type in Terminal) type the following commands.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null #This is just to Install Brew for the first time. If you already have it, it's not needed.
brew install unyaffs

If you chose using the UnYaffs2 binary, copy it to the very same folder where you placed the SIN, and thus, where the .yaffs2 is located.

If you chose the Brew installation, just continue.

Now, type in a Terminal (Command+Space, then type in Terminal).

cd [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]<file-route-of-the-sin>[/COLOR]
unyaffs2 [COLOR="Blue"]<the-name-of-the-yaffs2>[/COLOR]

Where <file-route-of-the-sin> is where the SIN was located, and thus, where the yaffs2 file is located; and where <the-name-of-the-yaffs2> you must type the file name of the yaffs2 (e.g. system.yaffs2)

The files will get extracted and you'll be able to pick the ones you need.

Step 3.b - Mount the image - Ext4FUSE

There're many many tools to mount a EXT format image in OSX, but in this case, since we don't need RW access, but just RO, I'll use ext4fuse, since it's free and it's more than compatible with our needs.

To install it you'll need Brew. To get things ready, type the following commands in a Terminal (Command+Space, then type in Terminal).

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null #This is just to Install Brew for the first time. If you already have it, it's not needed.
brew tap homebrew/fuse
brew install Caskroom/cask/osxfuse
brew install ext4fuse

If you're on OSX Yosemite, El Capitan, or Leopard, you may need an extra command to add yourself to the Operator group, so that you can have readonly permissions to the disks.

Use it only if you get an error while trying to access the mounted EXT image later.

sudo dscl . append /Groups/operator GroupMembership [COLOR="red"]<your-user>[/COLOR]

Where your user <your-user> is your username.

Now, to mount the ext4 image, type in a Terminal (Command+Space, then type in Terminal).

mkdir android
ext4fuse [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]<path-to-the-ext4-image>[/COLOR] android

Where <path-to-the-ext4-image> you must type in the full path where the SIN was located, and thus, where the EXT4 image is located.

Use this as reference.