iPod can boot Panther
 

I learned about it in this thread.

Hmmm, I hope it's not immodest of me to cite a thread I started, but I was young and foolish when I started it, and learned a lot by the time it had accrued 7 posts.

To Yellow
 

there is a lot of info over the there but all together is a big mixup for me since I am unequainted with the terms used in those threads. the only one I did understad was this: "why not just use NetInfo Manager?
Authored by: rgoer on Thu, Jun 21 '01 at 09:34AM
Any admin-level user who also has root access can use the utility 'NetInfo Manager' to accomplish this same task, and without any of the (small) problems you have encountered.

1. enable root user
2. select any user whose home directory you wish to move to another partition
3. edit the properties of that user
4. in the 'home directory' field, enter the path to the new home directory

A new 'users' directory will be created one level up from the path (if I remember correctly) and everything should work fine." any way thanks for trying.

Personally, I'd rather have a symbolic link so that anything and everything that points to /Users/foo can easily find said user in /Volumes/Fud/Users/. Don't assume that everything will play nice with NetInfo Manager, or even play with it at all..

maaaaaaaaaan I am lost
 

But thanks any way. got to go back to anatomy of the domestic mammals for my final.

Anatomy of Domestic Mammals
 

Well, there's a lot of variability in the arterial supply of the mammalian kidney, whether domestic, feral, or 'wild.'

Re: Anatomy of Domestic Mammals
 

I bet you say that to all the ladies.. or gents.. whichever is your preference anonymous sir.. err.. or ma'am.

actually there isn't a lot of variability in the arterial supply of the mammalian kidney, but other organs... that is a different story

now to get back on topic...
 

I have a variation on the partitioning question:

I have a new G5 to which I've added another 160GB SATA hard drive. In the past, I've always partitioned my larger hard drives into something along the lines of OS, Data, Backups, etc. I'm curious, though, is this is really still necessary, given some of the comments in this thread? I'd love some clarification on the contradictions.

Most here seem to say that, given the current OS X installer's ability to do an "archive and install" over a messed up installation, the separate partition for the OS is no longer necessary. My experience, though, is that I still get much better results with a full "erase and install" when things go south. So, wouldn't an OS partition still make sense in my case?

Also, neverEVER wrote:

Now I know that defragging is highly overrated, but his other points are interesting. The question is, are they true? Especially on a 2GHz dually G5 with the SATA hard drive(s)? It's funny, but a 160GB drive just feels too big to leave as one volume!! Oh, how times have changed, eh?

So anyhoo, what would you whiz kids recommend in my case???

TIA,
John-o

merely one factor, here, affords considerable advantage to partitioning.

consider fsck'ing a 7 GB partition vs. a 160 GB partition.

a factor of time on the order of 20.

a reasonable system partition lets you get back to usability N times faster.

the end.

merv, very helpful, as usual...
 

But further questions arise:

Running 10.3.2, fsck is no longer necessary, because of journaling, am I right? That said, does whatever fsck-like routine that the system does itself with journaling become more streamlined with a smaller system partition as well? And specifically, does your reply imply that you use 7 gigs for your system partition?

Also, do you know of any advantages, on large drives like these, of still using a separate data partition as well? Things like the faster searches and better system responsiveness that neverNever claims?

Thanks,
John-o

journaling does not preclude the usage of the fsck utility.

safeboot will always fsck the system partition.

if a preen fsck fails, then the filesystem is checked. (q.v. man fsck) journaling minimizes the chance for dirty filesystems.

certainly, smaller partitions will require smaller journals, so the journal roll-back operation is also smaller. smaller == less time (generally)

i have several different sized partitions, currently, root is 7 GB.

smaller partitions usually equate to shorter, focused operations, since they hold less structures.

operations on all of a large volume's structures for a file will take considerably longer than the operation on a 10 times smaller volume, right? e.g.,

find -x / -group wheel

consider the above for a 7 GB system partition vs. a larger volume with many more files - orders of magnitude faster.

you can exercise this notion by targeting operations on different sized directories on your drive, say /usr .vs /etc

As I said earlier there are many reasons to paritition but.....
 

We deal with individuals and we are ourselves @ many different levels of user expertise with differering hardware. 7 Gig Drive and 120 Gig drive/ Partitions are book end sizes. Or At least pretty close to book Ends:) 4 gig and 250gig is about as far as you can go...

My main point with not parititioning has to do with the lack necessity in so far as being able to do virgin Classic and OSX installs with out reformatting and with out having to worry about making too small partition, e.g. leaving enough room for growth and swap file space, and at the same time for simplicity.

of course as drive sizes increase there are more reasons why one might want to partition. I for example have no reason to partition my 40 gig boot volume (2/3 free space). I do however paritition my 30 gig FW drive into two back up volumes.

And I suppose if my start up volume was 120 gigs or more I would probably would paritition into three 40 gig partions.

Which partition the boot partition?
 

Right now I have a 7 GB and a 31 GB partition on my 40 GB drive (of course, they don't add to 40), but I'm leaning mervTormel's way and if I ever fully backup and and start over, I'm think I might try that.

The answer to my question is probably that it really does not matter, but I'll ask it anyway.

Which 7 gb partition should hold the boot volume, the first or the last? Isn't the last one representative of the edge of the disk and therefore the OS and the swapfiles would be on the edge where reading and writing would be fastest [or is it the other way around]. Or with today's drives, does it really matter?

Thanks!

Yes! Do partition. Many advantages in having everything separated.

In my setup I have two discs of the same size, partitioned in the same way:

6GB for OS (7 or 8 next time, but eh).
10GB for Apps (12-15 next time).
Rest for Users

Advantages:

1. No matter how much you fill your userspace, your OS partition always has a good 2GB free.

2. Backup. Since I have two discs partitioned the same, I backup my OS only before major system upgrades, my apps once a week and my Users daily.

3. Ease of installation and re-installation. I can for example clean install panther (haven't yet) on my OS partition. I can tell it to erase the whole partition.

After the installation is done, I recreate my users (you do have to do it in the same order, or use the same UIDs, or use some scripting), re-link my Users/Apps, to their proper places and I'm back in business.

If a system upgrade goes bad, I can go back to the last working version from my backup.

4. Something nice about clicking on the desktop, typing A apple-O and being in my apps folder, or for installing.

---
For me the best way of doing this is not with symlinks but using fstab. That way the partition is actually mounted where it needs to be.

In other words, instead of having the Users partition in /Volumes/Users, it gets mounted in /Users, where normally a folder would be.

Haven't had any trouble with netinfo, installing, unix, or anything at all using this setup. Look for "setting up a mountpoint system" in the main site for instructions.

v

Actually that is one of my problems with partitioning in some cirsumstances
 

It is sometimes difficult to forcast how much space to allocate for each use without having to start over.

e.g. "(7 or 8 next time, but eh).
10GB for Apps (12-15 next time)"

When one does not partition you have as much space as you have, as opposed to allocation concerns.

That said Partitoning has many many many uses....

I still feel for the novice user Partitoning the OS/Application drive is usually a mistake. I do like partitioning FW Back Up drives though.

Then again, Everyone has different needs, different hardware, and differernt user experience levels.

As I mentioned it prior posts. I might not parition a 20 to 60 gig OS/Application drive. Once one Hits 80 to 250 gigs (for the average user) it starts to get slothful not to..

2 drives, 80 GB and 60 GB, partitioned into 5:
Jag (Jaguar)
Ravage (Panther)
Quicksand (Audio/Samples)
Face (Docs)
Tripp (biggest one, at 60 GB, also has my OS 9 install and 52 GB of tunes)

Works nicely, hoping to grab a controller card at some point so I can use more drives.

BTW, it doesn't seem to matter which partition an OS is on, they'll all boot with no issues.

However, I don't run Classic at all, and think anyone who does shouldn't bother. I boot into 9 when I want to play Rune or work in Poser 4. It seems that using classic makes your system bog down, among other negative effects.

Give each OS X install 20 GB, that's been about right for my installs so far. OS 9 can deal with 10 GB. It might seem like a lot, but over time, 10 or 15 for OS X has ended up being too small.

Anyone who is going to partition their drive, if you're happy with your install, use Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner (login as root first) and just drop that back on whichever partition you want as your system.

You can find the program here:
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html