Mount Point for 2nd Hard Drive
 

I just bought a new 500GB SATA HD for my PowerMac G5. It is the second drive in there. Everything is still on the boot drive. The Disk Utility came right up and I put one partition on the new drive. I gave the drive a name "Mac HD 2" or something like that and when I mounted it, it automatically mounted the new HD to "/Volumes/[new HD name]". I noticed my other drives mount point is "/" even though it can also be navigated through "/Volumes/[original HD name]". I would like to change the mount point for the second HD to "/Users". I've done several searches, but I haven't really found what I'm looking for. Without an "/etc/fstab", I'm kind of at a loss. There should be a way to map /dev/dsk??? to /Users and copy (from a backup) my /Users directory contents to the new partition on the new HD.

Ideally, it would be nice if only one icon were on the Desktop and everything shows up like it does now (Movies, Music, Applications, etc) on the left side of the HD window. Can this be done? I know it can in Linux or UNIX and I might could "mount" the drive manually, but I want it to be a permanent thing and not something I need to do every time I boot up.

I've read several posts out there, but none of them seemed to be the resolution I'm looking for. I've seen the copy of the /Users directory to a backup location and call the new HD "Users" and its mount point would be /Volumes/Users and then create a symbolic link from the "/" partition to the "/Volumes/Users" partition.

I'd like to do this, obviously, without wiping out my primary HD. I plan to backup the /Users directory, or course, but I have Apache and Tomcat setup just the way I want it and I really don't want to go through that hassle again. Plus, it would take a while to install all the apps again and get all the updates (MS Office 04, Tiger updates, FCS Pro, etc).

by default OS X mounts everything in /Volumes.

If you were so inclined you could change the mount point by creating the /etc/fstab file and the Unix part of OS X will still parse the fstab at boot up. However, I am not sure if this will cause any problems down the road. Remember OS X is Unix, but it is Apple's version of Unix.

It seems like you're really wanting to move your home folder to the external drive. This is much, much easier than forcing OSX to change it's mount points. Just copy your home folder to the new volume and either create a symlink from old to new or change the NetInfo entry.

NetInfo manager
 

How do you change the directory location using netinfo?

Is using /etc/fstab not a viable solution? Just from browsing around different boards, I've found the symlink solution to not be completely viable because some apps (I think MS Office 2004 was one of them, which I have) don't like the /Users directory not being on the boot "/" physical drive?

Can anyone tell me where the mount point information is currently stored or placed for the previously installed drives and how they are "mounted" at boot time (or whenever). If I just type "mount", just like regular UNIX all of the drives and mount points are listed. So, how can I change/alter what mount sees without creating an /etc/fstab?

HEEEEELP! New hard drive installed, but cannot find solution
 

I put in a new hard drive into my PowerMac Dual G5 for DV video storage so that I can cut and splice the segments together into DVDs. Well, all the apps I use (mostly Final Cut Pro from Apple for this stuff) defaults saving the movie clips and temp DVD images in the user's "home" directory. So, I want to have the new hard drive mount to the "/Users" directory and then copy everything to that drive from the "boot" drive. I've searched the 'net many times and have found a few possible solutions (one was create an /etc/fstab file with the drive mount in it), but I understand that is not an optimal solution as some of the Mac OS X 10.4 updates depend on the /Users directory being on the "boot" drive. I will call Apple and pay for support if I have to, but I'd really like to do this without calling up and potentially paying for nothing. I thought someone out there in the "Mac World" would know since this is a pretty active board.

I'm desperate for help. I bought the hard drive specifically for this purpose and to store my iTunes music on it. I'm out of space on my primary drive (I guess due to apps installed). I can uninstall some, but I don't think that'll free up enough space. Any assistance would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

BMillikan:
I merged your new thread into this existing one where you seemed to be asking about the same problem.
Please don't start new threads when one is active on the same (or similar) subject.

I'm a debian command line guy, so ;-)

Have you thought about creating sym-links for the directories, and linking them to the external drive?

In a shell.

Something like;

ln -s /Users/<you>/directory-you-want-linked /Volumes/external-drive/directory

Symlink to /Users directory on another drive
 

I certainly appreciate the reply, but my travels across the web have warned of using symbolic links for the /Users directory because certain apps (and "Tiger" OS updates) apparently depend on the /Users directory being on your "boot" drive. I sure hope this is NOT true, but I haven't tried it. I'm out of space on my primary hard disk drive and my other SAMBA/CIFS drives have space, but I'm not real certain how to do a "ditto -rsckFork ...." on the /Users directory to copy it to a backup location before I mess up my computer. The same for my web site and Tomcat and various other servers I've had installed since I first got the computer.

I was hoping that changing the mount table might "fake out" the OS to think it was still on the "boot" drive, but actually be on the bigger drive. I'm getting more and more frustrated the more I look for answers :-P. Some say that changing the "mount point" for the drive won't work either.

I'm a Fedora/Solaris (x86 and Sparc)/HP/UX guy myself. How do you like Debian?

The Users folder should be on the boot volume, but symlinking the individual folders to the external drive works just fine.

About your applications insisting on using the home folder, if you explore the advanced settings you will find a temp or cache folder location - change it to whatever you want.

As amce stated, not the /Users/<yourname> folder, but a sub-folder.

I have /Users/<me>/Music sym-linked to my external 300gig hd, so I can hold all of my music.

I was Redhat guy, until they blew off the non-business market. Debian is well worth the time, but my new employer is HEAVILY into enterprise stuff, so I may be 'forced' ;-) to learn fedora/RHEL again.

This is off subject a bit, but running an enterprise level network it is really better to run enterprise versions of Linux. Open source just doesn't quite cut it when you are running enterprise level solutions. The main reason being the support you get when you purchase enterprise linux products. We are a novell shop, I would never run OpenSuSe on the server side for anything, I will run SLES for servers or SLED for client machines.

As for consumer based OSes, sure Debian and its children (ubuntu and other debain based distros) are excellent OSes. Debian's server side is actually very good and I could see that possible in enterprise level networks, but as for end user OS, no way would I see it being a suitable end user OS in an enterprise environment.

As for the sym link idea. I believe that is pretty much how portable or network home directories work. They are sym-linked to the network share via log in hook or by binding the client to a server. I do wish OS X had more advanced partitioning schemas built into the installer, where you can have root and user partitions.

Just a follow-up and a thank you to all!
 

Since we're off-topic a bit here, I'd have to agree with tlarkin on the Linux Distros. It has to be stable and it has to be supported. That being said, I used to work for a very LARGE defense contractor and for some unknown reason, our CUSTOMER decided to base their simulation (which, we were required to use for the contract) on Fedora Core 3! Isn't that ridiculous? If you run into issues with the OS (and, I don't know if we did... I was too busy working on the final product) where do you go for help? Well, forums... that's about it. There is one thing I will say about that wretched company we all love to hate.... Microshaft. When you have technical questions (and have, obviously, paid the bills for support) you will get your answer. You may get transferred 100 times or more, but they'll get you to someone who KNOWS the answer. It may be an engineer who designed the darn thing.

Which brings me back to my question. I did call Apple ready to pay for support. This is a home system (not a work one) and the person explained I was out of warranty (which I already knew) and didn't have Applecare (which, in retrospect, was a big mistake). But, I can confirm from Apple tech support that you technically can move the /Users folder to another partition, they really, really do not recommend it. Probably for the reasons you all have posted (as well as other posts I've come across on the 'net).

Symbolic links to the individual user's folders is a viable solution and I think that's the way I'll go.

I'm a little bummed, though. The '/home' directory in Linux/UN*X and the '/Users' directory in Darwin are so much alike. When I first started at that defense contractor, we'd always ask to have our '/home' directory mounted on the faster systems (since we tended to use our accounts more than most people did). So, SunOS (Solaris - in this case for Sun Sparc CPUs) didn't give a darn where your home directory physically was and they tended to have servers just with '/home' directories on it. It just makes good sense. So, I heartily agree that Apple should probably give you the option of moving folders (especially the "/Users" folder) to another partition or NFS mount or whatever. I mean, I guess you could just do the symlink think to each individual user... but, it'd be so much easier if you could just move the whole darn thing. Shoot, we even had startup scripts that had to go out and find your home folder and then mount it when you logged in or started a new session because EVERYONE back then had a UN*X account. We're talking about 4-5k of Engineers just at our site! Eventually, they mounted EVERYONE's '/home' to a huge storage Silicon Graphics system they called SAL9000. We're talking Terabytes or maybe even Petabytes or more of storage space. I saw the rack, it was monstrous. I should say "racks" because there were 4 or 5 I think for that system.

If you ask me, that's one of the BIGGEST drawbacks of Windows OS systems. Your "user" directory is stored locally on a local PC. I'm aware they support "roaming" profiles, but your installed applications don't follow you. And, I typically created a root directory called "Projects" for all my work stuff and that didn't get "collected" even if you were using roaming profiles. On Solaris, my "projects" folder was right behind my name in the "/home" folder. Any installed apps could be installed so that you could run it from anywhere. To me, that was the biggest benefit of the UN*X operating systems. I could use a ViewNow or Exceed window from a PC, I could log on to a console, whatever. But, I could always get to the things I needed. Since Apple is using a tailored version of BSD???, why wouldn't they keep that support in there to move root folders around "/Applications", "/Users", whatever could be local or external (including NFS or SAMBA/CIFS or whatever) mounts.

I have to say that I am disappointed now with Mac OS X. I thought for sure, since it was so UN*X-like, that you could partition a drive with a single partition and mount the '/Users' directory to it and, ideally, Mac OS X shouldn't care where it is... just that it's there. Bummer:( Samba.org is getting ready to release their attempt to integrate Linux/UN*X systems into Active Directory networks. I hope that Apple will integrate this new revision, once it is stable. It would be a shame to be able to integrate my Linux box, but not my Mac OS X box into my AD network.

Thanks for your help! Sorry for the rants. I'm an idealist, I guess. Perhaps Apple has their reasons for not allowing their main directories to be moved around, but it seems to be more like a hinderance than an enhancement.

OSX Server does exactly this with networked homes, the end user doesn't know. But it STILL doesn't move /Users as local users are stored there. You can change the path in NetInfo for the same effect, just the symlink method is faster and more visible. Apple doesn't support this directly because it's supposed to be a simple consumer OS, uncomplicated by questions like where to put your stuff. OSX Server's Workgroup Manager DOES ask where to put the home folder.

True, but...
 

My understanding is that Apple explicitly took this functionality out (to move your /Users folder to another drive or partition). If you've ever installed Linux, it usually has a default partition structure and allows the user to use the "disk druid" or other partition manager to do advanced stuff (like put /home on its own partition which I typically do). The symlink method works just fine and I got it running yesterday. I also changed the path in Netinfo realizing that I didn't have to.

I think it can be a simple consumer OS, but why take advanced functionality out when it's underlying structure is based on a type of UN*X? To me, that just doesn't make sense.

Thanks again for the symlink tip. It works like a charm. I actually moved the user's directories over (using the "ditto -rsrcFork" command) and was a little bummed it didn't copy over the icons as well for the folders. Maybe I should've moved them in a different way. I set up Netinfo, rebooted and everything worked fine. Then I deleted the original directories off the boot drive and created symbolic links to the user's directories in the /Users folder. I haven't run into any issues yet!

I guess symbolic links and aliases aren't the same thing. I found that out the hard way. I first created aliases and moved them to the /Users folder. I pulled up the Terminal window to find that it was not a symlink. So, I deleted that Alias folders (one of my Apps I was using was still pointing to /Users/[username]/Documents/Downloads and it choked) and put a symlink to the folder instead. The App worked fine after that! Just a little FYI, there.

Brian

Definitely not.
See the sym link section in this Unix FAQ:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=40648

Apple's Design Philosophy?
 

Perhaps this belongs in a thread all to itself, but perhaps you can explain to me why Apple would use the "darwin" kernel that is so "UNIX-like" and is kind of deceiving to us who have used many "flavors" of UNIX and Linux for a long time. Why would things like "aliases" not be the same as a symbolic link? Why go through the trouble of creating something that already exists? Of course, I'm assuming the symbolic link was there before the "aliases". I was never really an OS 9 user, so maybe it's something OS 9 users were used to? But, that still doesn't explain why they couldn't be the same thing? My symbolic links don't even show up (I guess they're hidden?) in the /Users directory when I navigate to the folder using the graphical interface.

I guess, as a designer (engineer), I don't understand why you would include two things that are (essentially) the same thing? Functionally, anyway. And, why limit the capabilities of the OS (like moving the /Users folder and such) with, what seems like, such a powerful underlying kernel? I don't get it. I suspect that most OS X users probably don't care about such things, but I was a UNIX (Solaris mostly) user and a Linux (Red Hat and derivatives) user before I was an OS X user. So, I guess I'm looking at this from a UNIX/Linux user's view rather than a previous Mac OS user. Don't get me wrong, I like Mac OS X. I think the "UNIX-like" Terminal window is great! I primarily got OS X to use applications like Final Cut Studio Pro to work on home movies (probably overkill, I know. But, I liked all the capabilities of FCS Pro). The "UNIX-like" underlying OS was an added bonus! I moved my Web Server from my Linux box to my Mac OS X box because both used Apache as the server and I was already very familiar with it. Same thing with Tomcat and javamail and activation.jar and various other Java apps.

Symlinks are fragile and break all the time.
Simply rename any part of the target's path,
or move the target somewhere else on disk.

Apple's aliases -- 90% of the time -- can heal
themselves... and continue to "work" without
any action (or knowledge) on the user's part.

-HI-

Sorry to bring up an old topic, I've also been doing research on this and as of 10.5 NetInfo is gone.

I am looking to do the EXACT same setup as BMillikan is/was. The problem is with 10.5 you cannot delete directories like /Users/<name>/Music as it gives an error message about being needed for OS X. I'd like to mount /Users on my second drive as the bulk of my data is always stored under the /User directory.

Is this now possible?

In 10.5 everything is now under directory services, the command line is dscl for it if you are looking at modifying a user's mount point for their home directory.

You can use Workgroup Manager (Part of Server Tools) to modify client user settings.

And as has been said above, don't move /Users, move the individual user. And keep one local admin to fix things.

You CAN delete the Music, Pictures, Sites folders easily but not in the Finder - it's designed to prevent 'mistakes' kile that. The command line doesn't do any checking :eek:
Just don't expect the bundled applications to work afterward.

Go to System Preferences > Accounts.
Unlock the padlock and type your admin password.
Right-click on the user account that you want to change.
Select "Advanced Options"

You will then be presented with a dialog that includes a field for where the User account is to be stored. You can change that from /Users/user to /Volumes/Second Drive/user.

You could also create symbolic links form ~/ to /volumes/myotherdrive/Users/Username

also the dscl command line has syntax for setting home directories.