/Users on another partition [was Re: Mac Mini]

[Andrew Zschetzsche]

Yes, you can partition OS X, more or less. This link goes over how you can
put the /Users onto a separate partition that you set up during the install
(as you install, you choose Disk Utility under the first menu bar you come
to, otherwise you will never see it.)  I've done it, and it worked pretty
well.

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

There is another page there that discusses how to move the swap activity
onto a separate partition formatted with the UFS, to reduce fragmentation.

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

I've also done this before at the same time.

Andy


On 1/20/05 1:58 AM, "Jurvis LaSalle" <lasalle at bard.edu> wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2005, at 2:07 AM, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
>> The main problem is that Apple's developers don't understand (or use)
>> OS X
>> "unix" capabilities, so everything is supposed to happen in one, big
>> partition - you can't tell iMovie to allways use a specific directory,
>> or
>> iDVD that it should create it's DVD image on an external hard disk. I
>> never
>> found a hint how to tell OS X I would like to put the "users"
>> directory on
>> another partition....
> You probably didn't look hard either...  but since I'm procrastinating
> anyway-
> let me hold your hand for a bit ;-D
> 
> <xterm>
> [2-lasalle at aradorns-laptop)~%
>        =>uname -a
> Darwin aradorns-laptop.local 7.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.7.0: Sun Nov
>   7 16:06:51 PST 2004; root:xnu/xnu-517.9.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC  Power
> Macintosh powerpc
> 
> [3-lasalle at aradorns-laptop)~%
>        =>cat /etc/fstab
> /dev/disk0s3 /Users hfs rw 0 2
> 
> [4-lasalle at aradorns-laptop)~%
>        =>sudo pdisk /dev/disk0 -dump
> /dev/disk0  map block size=512
>     #:                 type name                  length   base      (
> size )
>     1:  Apple_partition_map Apple                     63 @ 1
>     2:            Apple_HFS Panther             25165824 @ 64        (
> 12.0G)
>     3:            Apple_HFS Users               58720256 @ 25165888  (
> 28.0G)
>     4:      Apple_Bootstrap untitled                2048 @ 83886144  (
> 1.0M)
>     5:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 YDL3.0.1            12288000 @ 83888192  (
> 5.9G)
>     6:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 boot                  153600 @ 96176192  (
> 75.0M)
>     7:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 YDL4                 8192000 @ 96329792  (
> 3.9G)
>     8:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                 5242880 @ 104521792 (
> 2.5G)
>     9:      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 gentoo               7445568 @ 109764672 (
> 3.6G)
> 
> Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=117210240
> DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
> </xterm>
> 
> I use a typical *nix /etc/fstab constructed from info found with pdisk
> and load it in NetInfo with the following command (this only has to be
> done once):
> 
> sudo niload -m fstab / < /etc/fstab
> 
> Some say that my internal hard drive won't always be detected as disk0.
>   I've yet to get smacked with that problem probably because this is a
> laptop and I rarely have other disks attached besides a cd/dvd.  YMMV.
> I'm really starting to wish that I had gone with the 80GB drive
> instead, then I could fit some more BSDs in or even give a nameless
> distro a slice :-D (not to mention more rpms|faster access|hotter lap).
> 
> As to your first lament, I also often wonder why OS X doesn't partition
> itself at all.  Cutting off a data partition like /Users makes upgrades
> and
> reinstalls much easier and faster to perform (I also install all
> non-default OS X apps on the /Users partition to facilitate the
> process).  Of course, Apple is all about keeping it simple.
> Partitioning is drastically different depending on your needs and
> computer literacy.  Explaining to someone that he shouldn't have put
> all his junk on his OS partition can be conceptually much tougher than
> pointing it out when his whole hard drive is full.  I doubt Apple will
> ever partition a default install without some drastic change to their
> hardware (say maybe new G5's that support CPU partitioning and have
> some über-LVM disk i/o daemon running in the HyperVisor automatically
> allocating disk according to the needs of various partitions).  Who
> knows though- I can remember the days when RAM had to be doled out much
> like these partitions...
> 
> Jurvis LaSalle
> 
> 
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-- 
Andrew Zschetzsche
University of Minnesota, Morris
zsche004 at mrs.umn.edu
aim: zsche004
msn: zsche004 at mrs.umn.edu

America's Best Public Liberal Arts College.

--The best answer to a problem with multiple solutions is often the simplest
one.