setting up applications on multiple partitions

greeneggsaregoodgreeneggsaregood
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Well I am planning on splitting up my ibook 30GB drive into three partitions, two five gig partitions and one 18 gig partition. The goal is to have 10.2.6 on the first five gig partition, 10.3 on the second. and the third is for shared applications and data.



What i want to try out is how Mac OS X works with applications and my data on separate drives as i am in the process of scoping out an external firewire drive which will take the place of the partitioning on the ibook.



What i want to know is if I do this, can i use the applications between the two or will it require that i have the applications installed locally on each os partition? Do i just place the applications folder on the data partition and go from there? Are there any other files that i must place there or setup to point the OS to the apps? How does my home folder work with two operating systems?



The more i think about this, the more i see this becoming a pain but i want to know what to expect before i buy a three hundred dollar hard drive that i cant use the way i want.



Thanks in advance, and no i dont even have panther so please dont chew me out for thinking/planning ahead.



greeneggsaregood

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    You shouldn't merge the Applications folders of 10.2 and 10.3 in the first place. 10.3 is a developer preview, which means it's in early stage. Lots of crap might happen with it, including its bundled applications.



    You can put your Applications folder on a secondary partition; simply creating a symlink should work.



    As to the home directory, create both a symlink as well as tell NetInfo the new location.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    greeneggsaregoodgreeneggsaregood Posts: 32member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chucker

    You shouldn't merge the Applications folders of 10.2 and 10.3 in the first place. 10.3 is a developer preview, which means it's in early stage. Lots of crap might happen with it, including its bundled applications.



    You can put your Applications folder on a secondary partition; simply creating a symlink should work.



    As to the home directory, create both a symlink as well as tell NetInfo the new location.



    I am not planning on using 10.3 preview/developer release. I am setting up my system for the release copy in advance as i plan to have a firewire hard drive by then. The goal is then to have two system partitions and the firewire drive with applications and data on it. I just want to know how to do so i can plan and test accordingly before i buy the hard drive.



    could you please help me with the details in how i go about setting up a symlink for the application folder and home directory?



    Thanks
  • Reply 3 of 5
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Applications: don't do.



    Really.



    Let the Apple installers tackle each boot partition as separate, since most of the Apple apps will be changed between OS updates, generally non-interchangeably. (Besides, that way you don't have to worry about backing up those directories at all... they're always re-installable. I have a symlink in /Applications that points to *my* applications folder treetop, named, oddly, UserApplications, which points to /Users/Shared/Applications/.)



    /Users: You can do this with NetInfo, but it won't work with a FireWire drive... how the heck are you going to log in if the drive isn't plugged in? :/



    But, this gets to the second part of dealing with different versions of Apple (or any) applications: have you noticed how, with every upgrade, the support files (your data, prefs, etc) seem to move around on you? :/ You may have not noticed it, but they have, considerably. For instance, if you move from 10.1 to 10.2, and use the 10.2 Address Book, add some names, then go back to 10.1, the new names won't be there. Why? Because the 10.2 AB imported the old files, and wrote them out as new ones in a new format, in a new place. The old ones are left in the old place, however, so the 10.1 AB will still find them, but any changes made while in 10.2 won't appear.



    This is systemic. In general, you'll need to have separate ~/Library folders as well, and you *still* run the risk of running new apps on, say, stuff in your Documents folder, and having it upgrade the file format such that the older versions of the apps can no longer read them.



    It's not dire, and it can be done, but it really isn't for the faint of heart. I've tried it, and it can screw you up *so* fast if you don't know what to expect.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    I fully agree with Kickaha, but if you want to make your own experiences, follow these instructions:



    (NB: Whenever I type "Yourname" or "chucker" or something like that, I of course mean *your* login name. Check to make sure!)



    1. Launch the NetInfo Manager. That's a nifty tool to read and change the NetInfo database from the GUI. However, you just want to read (see below). You'll find the path "/users/" and you'll find your own name therein. Clicking it will show you all sorts of information - your full name, the encrypted password, your preferred shell, etc. What you want to know is your home directory path. It'll probably be "/Users/Yourname". Note it down for emergency cases - you never know.



    2. Boot into single-user mode (Cmd-S). Log in as root (i.e. mount the drive read-write, etc.), then type "man niutil". This will give you the docs for the command-line NetInfo Utility. You do need this because you really don't want to mess with your account whilst being logged into it (and while running the GUI). Now move the stuff to the new directory. You can create it using "mkdir" (make directory), like "mkdir /Volumes/davidson/HomeChucker" created my new "HomeChucker" directory on my secondary partition "davidson". "mv" moves the stuff in.



    3. Basically do the same thing as before first: "niutil -list / /users" will show you all available users. The contents "niutil -read / /users/Yourname" outputs should be nothing new to you either. "niutil -readval / /users/Yourname home 0" gives you what you want to modify.



    4. "sudo niutil -insertval / /users/Yourname home "/Volumes/davidson/HomeChucker" 0" (don't forget to use *your* name and *your* new path) is the command you've been waiting for. Pray that it works, and if it doesn't, get back to this thread on another computer or account and tell me what went wrong.



    5. There's another thing you should do. Some apps are lame?. A symlink will try and fix that. "ln -s /Volumes/davidson/HomeChucker/ /Users/chucker/" creates a symlink at "/Users/Yourname" - your former home directory - that points to your new one. The first app I encountered which required this was Camino, but that was many months ago, so maybe they fixed that.



    6. Similarly, you can move your Applications - and create symlinks.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    jellytusslejellytussle Posts: 86member
    I run my pbg4 with a shared Applications partition (between 10.2 client and 10.2 server). You can mount a partition anywhere in the filesystem using /etc/fstab - mine has the line



    LABEL=Applications /Applications hfs rw 1 2



    to mount my Applications partition at /Applications. It works great, and all installers work fine. The completist would probably use the partition UUID to identify it, not the label, since that can be changed.
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