UNIX vs MacOS alias

[chevy]

What is the relation between UNIX and MacOS aliases ? A MacOS alias isn't an alias in UNIX !

[chevy]

I want to move files to other locations than the default ones. In particular I want to move the applications and the virtual memory to another disk partition.

I am administrator of the machine and I have 4 other users (my wife and children) I therefore I need the system to follow the links independantly of the logged user.

[chevy]

I have made 4 1.5 GB partitions from my 6 GB HD (a few years ago): Applications, Documents, Games and System. I have a copy of OS 8,6 in Applications and OS 9.2 in Documents. OS-X uses the full System partition.

I just made a soft link to move the Applications folder to a similarly named folder inside the Application partition. It looks ok. As stated in the thread youmentionned, just moving the fildes creates lots of problems. I used SUDO to move the old Applications folder.

For the users, I use the normal MacOS aliases for each user to point to their old OS9 folders in the Applications partition. I haven't restarted yet !

[chevy]

You are perfectly right and I am experiencing it the hard way.

Once the "ln -s" was made, it worked fine... and then I upgraded to 10.1.1... bad idea ! The link was broken by the update. The only thing that was installed was a partial mail.app folder but this was enough to block it. I rebuild all my trick (move the Applications folder to a dummy name (sudo mv Applications App_dummy), recreate the soft link to my Applications folder on the Applications partition, then move one by one each new file from the dummy folder to the old mail.app... ) and restart.

Mail now works again, but not perfectly. I must say I also used Entourage in the mean time, and Entourage has the tendency to interfere with Apple's mail.

I must say I used Sun with UNIX at work when I was a scientist and it was really completely controlled by links at top level so that we could add/change disks at will. And I want the same with OS X.

[chevy]

the softlink works fine, as long as Apple does not try to change it in its update !

The way I found is the following:

cd /
sudo mv /Applications App_dummy
ln -s "/Volumes/Applications/Applications (MacOS 9)/Applications" Applications

Now my Applications folder is rerouted to the old system 9 applications folder. I still have to move the files that were in the OS X Applications flder to the old OS 9 Applications folder, and this can be done either with a "mv" instruction or in the finder.

It is safe and works for all users.

Now the problem is when you install an Apple update that will kill the link and replace it by a new folder (Apple, please accept to follow you user's links !). When it happens, copy the new files in the same location in the OS 9 directory (and do that for all files, including the ones hidden in the .app folders that are the new application files; you can open these in the Finder by ctrl-clicking on the OS X application files and choosing "open content" probably ("Afficher le contenu du Progiciel" in French )). When you are ready, move the /Applications folder in a safe place and rebuild the link (see above).

[chevy]

Eventualy my system X became very slow. I think it is because disk space in the system X partition was too small.

So I went the other way and reformated the disk with 3G for OS-X and OS-9 and the main applications (Office...). I have 2 extra partitions (Users and Games).

To link each user with its folder in the Users partition, I added a soft link in each user's directory:

cd /Users/Toto
sudo "Volumes/Users/Toto" Users_Toto

inclusive one for the Shared folder.

Then I instructed each user to put as much as possible in its own Users_Toto folder.