How do I use another Partition or HD as my Home folder?

J

Jasoco

Video Gamer/Collector
And can I have the actual root of the HD be the folder and have all the Home Contents be right there in the root of the HD?

I guess what I want is to just be able to access my Home right from the bottom of the file structure. And an alias on the DT won't do, because the Home will still be in the User folder. I want it to be somewhere else.

This is an alternate question to the thread I just asked (See Mount the Home on DT), and I'd rather do this than the other, but would like to know both.
 
Hmmm... Perhaps I should get a FireWire HD to back up first? I wouldn't want to screw my self again. Is there a danger?

Also, the way my Partitions are set up I'd want to move my OS X to the second partition. Is this possible yet? Or does OS X still only run from the first partition?

As for permissions. I hate them. That part makes me afraid to attempt this.

-----------------------------------

Also, a side note. Does Unix see the current User's Home folder as a Volume or not? I was under the impression that it was seen by Unix as a Volume. As stated above in your example, "/dev/disk0s9 xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx% /Volumes/username" Because I had started a thread before this about trying to mount my Home on the Desktop instead.
 
So i tried this trick. in all my UNIX experiences i always found it helpful to have /home be a seperate partition. With OSX i found that with my partition in the /etc/fstab file, the partition only mounted about half of the time. it was very annoying. i can t imagine why it was so ambiguous. i would boot up, only to find an empty home directory, with my proper home at /Volumes/home

note that even when OSX did mount my home on /Users/home as requested, it also mounted it on /Volumes/home, so it was mounted twice.

testuser, note that the little house icon would show up whereever. you could solve both of Jasocos questions this way. If you mounted your dirve on /Users/username, instead of on /Users like i did, then you would get your home directory mounted on the desktop and your home directory would be on a second drive. if only i could get it to stick.

testuser do you have any ideas as to why this mount is not reliable? i tried to first set autodiskmount to -REMOVABLE-, and then to -NO, but it didn t seem to affect anything. dmesg told me nothing either. the mount command kept giving me errors too, whenever i tried to mount manually.

in the end, i ended up going into netinfo and changing my home directory to /Volumes/home/lethe. that works just fine, although you will have to change it for every user you add. a little annoying.

also i ll say that there weren t any permissions issues. i didn t copy any of the contents of /Users/lethe to the new partition. the OS created new Desktop, Library and Documents directories, and i don t really care about that other junk. maybe i will make a Sites directory if i want web sharing, but the other stuffs (movies, music, etc..) i don t need. and i can t imagine that anything critical would break if the permissions of your movies directory got set wrong by finder when copying.
 
do you think there is anyway i can tell system preferences that when i create a new user, it should tell netinfo /Volume/home/newuser, instead of default /Users/newuser? something akin to /etc/useradd.conf.

otherwise i will have to just sticking with adding users from the command line.
 
I think for all those involved in this post, it is important to read what Mike Bombich has to say about moving your /Users directory. He makes some good points regarding Netinfo and how to copy files without losing permissions (using the "ditto" command).

You can find his site here:

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/

Look under the Tech Tips section. He's also very knowlegable and didn't seem to mind me asking him some questions via e-mail when I was apprehensive about moving my /Users folder. Also worth mentioning is that I've had no trouble with my /Users being on another drive, even after a full system reinstall.


Kent!
 
OK, first ksignori, thanks for the link. it wasn t helpful for the present issue, but i like the sight a lot, and he does have lots of infos on OSX so thanks.

and testuser, thanks for the tip about autodiskmount. i thought i was turning off autodiskmount by making that change in /etc/hostconfig, but that didn t seem to have any effect. is that automount entry in /etc/hostconfig for the NFS autmounter, rather than local disks? i read on a thread here that you could change the entry there to REMOVABLE, to get the disk mounter to only moiunt removable disks, so i thought it controled the autodiskmounter rather than NFS automounter.

anyway, i think i know what is happening to my system that makes it fail to mount from fstab, and i don t think it has anything to do with the autodiskmounter. actually, i suspected this cause already the other day, but it seems strange.

i believe that my disks device names are not staying constant across reboots. does this sound possible? i have never heard of another UNIX that operates that way. if that is what is happening it makes the /etc/fstab file pretty much unusable.

here is my /etc/fstab file:
Code: 
/dev/disk1s2    /Volumes/vmem           hfs     rw      1       2
/dev/disk1s3    /Users                  hfs     rw      1       2
/dev/disk3s7    /Volumes/SeagateSCSI    hfs     rw      1       2
#/dev/disk1s3   /Volumes/OSXUFS         ufs     rw      1       2

here is the output from pdisk. i am going to post it again after i reboot:
Code: 
Top level command (? for help): L
/dev/rdisk0  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:            Apple_HFS vmem                4194304 @ 64       (  2.0G)
   3:            Apple_HFS Untitled 2         75846872 @ 4194368  ( 36.2G)
   4:           Apple_Free                           0+@ 80041240

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=80041248
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk1  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:      Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap              1600 @ 64      
   3:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                2097152 @ 1664     (  1.0G)
   4:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /                  16777216 @ 2098816  (  8.0G)
   5:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /home              20226304 @ 18876032 (  9.6G)

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=39102336
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk2  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:            Apple_HFS OSXHFS             43104176 @ 64       ( 20.6G)
   3:            Apple_UFS OSXUFS             10485760 @ 43104240 (  5.0G)
   4:            Apple_UFS DarwinUFS          10485760 @ 53590000 (  5.0G)
   5:           Apple_Free                           0+@ 64075760

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=80418240
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk3  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                  length   base      ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                     63 @ 1        
   2:            Apple_HFS LaCieFirewire      156301416 @ 64        ( 74.5G)
   3:           Apple_Free                            0+@ 156301480

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk4  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:       Apple_Driver43*Macintosh                54 @ 64      
   3:       Apple_Driver43*Macintosh                74 @ 118     
   4:       Apple_FWDriver Macintosh               200 @ 192     
   5:   Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh               512 @ 392     
   6:        Apple_Patches Patch Partition         512 @ 904     
   7:      Apple_Bootstrap untitled              20481 @ 1416     ( 10.0M)
   8:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                1638401 @ 21897    (800.0M)
   9:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled           12582913 @ 1660298  (  6.0G)
  10:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled           21694289 @ 14243211 ( 10.3G)

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=35937500
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 23, type=0x1
2: @ 118 for 36, type=0xffff

pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk5'  (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk6'  (No such file or directory)
 
and after rebooting:
Code: 
Top level command (? for help): L
/dev/rdisk0  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:      Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap              1600 @ 64      
   3:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                2097152 @ 1664     (  1.0G)
   4:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /                  16777216 @ 2098816  (  8.0G)
   5:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /home              20226304 @ 18876032 (  9.6G)

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=39102336
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk1  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:            Apple_HFS vmem                4194304 @ 64       (  2.0G)
   3:            Apple_HFS Untitled 2         75846872 @ 4194368  ( 36.2G)
   4:           Apple_Free                           0+@ 80041240

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=80041248
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk2  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                 length   base     ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                    63 @ 1       
   2:            Apple_HFS OSXHFS             43104176 @ 64       ( 20.6G)
   3:            Apple_UFS OSXUFS             10485760 @ 43104240 (  5.0G)
   4:            Apple_UFS DarwinUFS          10485760 @ 53590000 (  5.0G)
   5:           Apple_Free                           0+@ 64075760

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=80418240
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

/dev/rdisk3  map block size=512
   #:                 type name                  length   base      ( size )
   1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                     63 @ 1        
   2:            Apple_HFS LaCieFirewire      156301416 @ 64        ( 74.5G)
   3:           Apple_Free                            0+@ 156301480

Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk4'  (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk5'  (No such file or directory)
pdisk: can't open file '/dev/rdisk6'  (No such file or directory)


you can see that the disks have changed their device names. very strange, no? what do you think?
 
WHOA WHOA WHOA take it E A S Y folks! it' smuch easier than all tha *nix stuff! i did it in 1 minute! i made a partition my home folder ! E - e - a - s - y.

fire up netinfo. authenticate yourself, got to users, your user name, home, chnage it to Volumes/new home name (partition name) Voilá! you might have to copy all your folders to the new partions as they were in the original partiion, the most important thing is your library folder! then you can trash everything in your old users folder but DO NOT TRASH your usename folder. just leave it there, here i will include a screen shot of my setup
 

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well like i ve already posted, i ended up settling for that solution. IE using netinfo to change home directory to be /Volumes/home/lethe.

honestly i really think that specifying the mount point is more flexible and more efficient, and it is the traditional UNIX way to do it. but i will have to do what works. i had been using my system that way for two day, with my home directory being defined in netinfo to be /Volumes/home/lethe, and i just switched back to the initial plan, to fool around with it some more. since i ve switched back, my system has pretty much been 50/50 whether it is going to mount my partition on /Users or not.

about my hardware: there are 4 IDE drives (well 3 if you don t count the optical), 2 SCSI drives, and 1 external FW drive, so perhaps it s not surprising that things act crazy with so many conflicting technologies...

you ask, why did it show 4 drives before the reboot and 5 after? your guess is as good as mine. the external drive showed up both times. the one that flaked out was a SCSI drive.


and sorry if pdisk was too much.
 
hmmm....

i wonder if the SCSI card is the source of all this strange behaviour in OSX.... it seems to have very bad support in OSX. when i first installed it with OSX, it wouldn t mount any drives at all. then on the suggestion of adaptec tech support i stuffed a jumper on there that (according to them) disabled some kind of SCSI driver check or something. something about the driver on the card being incompatible with the driver on the disk.

anyway, maybe this would all work if i 86ed my SCSI cards.... you think that might be it?
 
thanks for all your advice testuser. as usual, you are very helpful. i can t really swap out my SCSI cards right now, but i would like to follow up on this matter soon. FYI there are two SCSI cards, adaptec 2906 (for some of my ancient hardware), and a 29160, for internal Ultra160 hard drives. and their OSX support is a little flaky, so i consider it possible that they are responsible. in other unices these device node names are hardware dependent; they describe the physical location of the disk, so it would make them seem to be always fixed. it just seems weird that this is not the case here.

on a different matter, i would like to take this opportunity to vent a little issue (probably the 3rd time on these boards). everywhere i keep hearing, SCSI is out firewire is in. get rid of your SCSI devices, since apple is no longer interested.

OK so i think that s great. firewire is a fabulous technology for external devices. and it is so nice to not have to deal with SCSI IDs and termination and such. and firewire is hot pluggable, and it s just plain fast! sign me up cause i m ready.

but what about internal hard drives? i ve never seen an internal firewire hard drive. you have only two options: IDE and SCSI. and you can t tell me that IDE is better than SCSI for internal. the best argument you can make is that the speed of SCSI can t really be used unless you have fast expensive disks. lets see: IDE goes up to what? 66 M? ultra scsi160 is almost twice that! and with the the processing being done on the controller, instead of the CPU, it speeds up your whole system (in theory)

the proof is here: if you order a high end server from apple, on their website, it comes with ultra scsi 160. now we don t all have servers, and we don t all need that kind of speed (i certainly don t. i mostly have it for compatibility). but my question is this: how can we say that apple is no longer going with SCSI? it s right their on their website! bah!

i don t know. you think i m way off base on this? anyway, i ll get back to this thread in a little while, to see if i can t pin down exactly where my system is turning screwy. in the mean time, it s gonna be niutil . -writeprop /users/home /Volumes/home/lethe
 
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