Seperate Home Folder Partition

J

jackt283

Registered
I have been working on a partition system that will allow me to have my home folder on a partition of it's own. To do this I have used NetInfo (by changing the path to my home folder) and it works, except when automatic login is enabled. The problem is that the home partition is not mounted until it has already loaded the user, so all my preferences (dock, desktop background, etc) revert back to default.

Now i have tried using fstab (loading into NetInfo) to mount the partition at launch using the following line:

Code: 
/dev/disk0s3 /Volumes/USER vfat 1 2

The partition is fat32 format, and I am doubtful that vfat is the correct type to use.

But on launch it can't find the partition, and it doesn't mount until the desktop appears.

Any one here know a bit about fstab and Mac OS X?
 
I believe vfat IS the correct filesystem type for FAT32.

Have you checked a/the system log (not sure what it's called on OS X) to see mount messages when the system boots? Can user home directories exist in a FAT32 partition?

Peace...
 
I'm starting to think that having ones home partition on a fat32 drive is a bad thing. I'm getting all sorts of weird things happening. No shutdown or logout from the apple menu, now mail can't open my mailboxes. It says they are in use by another computer... Strange.
 
I would assume because FAT32 has a different default set of file-level permissions (it's like rwx for root, but only r-x for everyone else)...

I would recommend having your home folder partition formatted as HFS+ for best results.
 
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