[latrapeze]

Is there a method of getting a partition NOT to mount at startup?
Thanks.

[macaddict0001]

You go to system preferences and choose a different boot volume or I think you can hold option at startup

[Lateralus]

His question was about volume mounting, not selecting the boot device.

[latrapeze]

True.

[bowwowman]

Originally posted by latrapeze:
Is there a method of getting a partition NOT to mount at startup?
Thanks.

In Panther......

Disk Utility >> highlight the partition >> select "unmount" from the toolbar >> whalah
to remount at any time, choose "mount"

[latrapeze]

Yes, but can you get this to take place at start-up automatically and then mount the disk manually through Disk Utility when needed?
Thanks.
Phil

[sine -''-..-]

I have a lock on this thread and will beam it to the Mac OS X fourm, its not appropriate to the mac mod forum.

Engage!

[macaddict0001]

sorry I guess i didn't fully understand the question, now that it has been answered there is no need for me here.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
sorry I guess i didn't fully understand the question, now that it has been answered there is no need for me here.

It wasn't answered. Using Disk Utility only unmounts the drive one time, it'll be back the next time he restarts (no different than ejecting a drive by dragging it to the trash can). On a normal *nix box I imagine you'd have to edit the filesystem table at /etc/fstab, but I don't think that same rules apply here. Plug and play dominates... hah.

The best thing I can think of is an Applescript that runs upon login that "tells" the Finder to eject the particular volume.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally posted by [APi]TheMan:
The best thing I can think of is an Applescript that runs upon login that "tells" the Finder to eject the particular volume.

Haven't done it myself, but recall reading a discussion back in the early Jaguar days. The script approach worked, but with one hitch: If the user logging in wasn't an admin, the OS would ask for an admin password before allowing the volume to be unmounted. Two possible ways of working around that were 1] put a password in the script (insecure), and 2] edit the sudoers file to allow all users access to that one command (disktool -p).

Not sure how much of this still applies in Panther.

[Angus_D]

Edit /etc/fstab. See the diskarbitrationd manpage - i think "noauto" in the flags will do it.

[Tsilou B.]

You can do this with VolumeWorks from SubRosaSoft. It can hide partitions, so that they won't be mounted automatically. VolumeWorks is not free, however.

[P]

The cleanest way is to unset the "automount" flag in the partition map. I know that you could do this with Norton back in the OS 9 (or rather, 7) days. Today you'll have to use pdisk in the terminal, and pdisk is not for the faint of heart. Try "pdisk -h" to get some quick documentation on how it works. Essentially, what you want is something like

sudo pdisk /dev/disk0 -setAutoMount 9 0

Where:

/dev/disk0 is the device name for the raw device. You can get this from Disk Utility by selecting the disk (not its partition) and getting info - add "/dev/" before the name do it looks like my example above. You can get it from "df" as well.

9 is the number of the partition, or rather of the slice. That you can also see in Disk Utility, if you select the partition, Get Info, and read the number at the bottom of the info screen (Partition Number).

0 is the flag, 0 for false or 1 for true.

Oh yeah, and BACK UP YOUR DATA before messing with pdisk. Really!