[ginoledesma]

Hi guys.

I'm quite confused with Mac OS X/BSD's underlying file locations. In Linux, I set up my system such that certain directories (/bin and its variants, /home) are on separate partitions. I want to do the same in Mac OS X.

My current setup:
Mac OS X HD (/) - 2GB
Mac OS 9 HD - 1 GB
Apps HD (I wanna put /home, /bin, etc here) - 4GB
Docs HD - 3 GB

Right now, there're a lot of apps in the Mac OS X HD, but I want to move ALL of them to my Apps HD. In short, I wanna make my Apps HD my /bin and/or /home as well.

How can I do this? :?

I was starting to wonder how to do this as well, since there is no custom install option. All I could think of was to first create the new partitions, and then move everything over to the new one. Then delete the existing directory in the terminal, and create a symbolic link in it's place pointing to the new location. Does anyone think this is a reasonable solution for the time being?

NOTE: I have not tried the above suggestion, so I am not positive if this is feasible or not.

[interactive_civilian]

Originally posted by kampl:
I was starting to wonder how to do this as well, since there is no custom install option. All I could think of was to first create the new partitions, and then move everything over to the new one. Then delete the existing directory in the terminal, and create a symbolic link in it's place pointing to the new location. Does anyone think this is a reasonable solution for the time being?

This seems entirely feasible, but according to this article at Stepwise installing programs using .pkg files can break these links.

[ginoledesma]

That sounds feasible, I guess, but alas, I can't do that just yet. I'll try to look up more on the topic, though.

[madra [again!]]

i've got a similar situation. i want to keep all my apps and system stuff on one partition and use the other partition for keeping my users on.

i found that moving my users folder to the other partition and making a symbolic link back tended to throw up file not found errors and lose preferences.

trying to set the other disc as the users directory in netinfo manager threw up lots of permissions errors [even tho' the disc was supposedly writeable by all]

at the moment i seem to be having better luck with aliasing certain folders witihn the users directory to the other disc. such as documents, library/caches etc. but keeping things like library/prefs in the original location.

as i'm the sole user of the machine i'd also like to find a way to set up so that 'root' and 'madra' [the user] both share the same set of folders; home, prefs, documents etc but i seem to run into problems here with premissions which seem to change when root has been using a directory or [indirectly through an app] a preference so that 'madra' can no longer access them.

as a result i'm pretty much logged in as root all the time [working on the assumption that it's better to play with fire and get some work done than to play it safe and not be able to 'control' my own machine]

i think apple have really screwed up on this one. the documentation for X pretty much encourages you to partition your hard drive but then you are given no control or say in where things are installed and X tends to throw a wobbly if you try to move things about.




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the original madra - airbrushed out of history in a stalinist manner!

[ginoledesma]

Yes. I am so infuriated and exasperated with regards to permissions. I simply don't understand the difference in power of root and an admin who has the same gid as root.

I've been trying to tinker around with the Mac OS X CD and find out a way if its possible for me to setup the BSD *base* using Apple's Darwin and distribute the partitions the way I want it and simply have Aqua and the other stuff installed later on.

[madra [again!]]

totally agree.

i can understand the philosophy behind priveleges [i.e. to stop the user messing up their machine] and it may well be necessary on a UNIX server in the bowels of some science lab doing vital research somewhere... but for day to day use it's just total overkill.

OK protect my system files... fair enough, warn me if i'm going to delete something vital or otherwise screw things up... but when i'm logged in as an admin and i can't even move a file from one folder to another or delete a stray alias on the desktop because i haven't got 'priveleges' it soon becomes extremely irritating.

i got so pissed off with it that i just log in as root fulltime now and incredible as it may seem to the unix doomsayers out there, i haven't deleted my system files yet!



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the original madra - airbrushed out of history in a stalinist manner!

Can we just create the new partitions on whatever disk, and edit the fstab in the /etc directory to reflect those partions as the new mount points?

[tinrib]

why bother partitioning your drive - its just gonna annoy you when you realise you wanted 5 gigs for your apps and only 2 for you docs etc. OK obviously sometimes partitioning is for good reason, e.g. for a separate OS9 partition, but this seems like overkill.