RobG's idea to install applications on 2nd partition rather than clean 10.3 partition

Norm Nager · 11-13-2003, 03:07 PM

In an aside on a Nov. 13 hint, Rob made the following excellent suggestion on which I have a few questions:

"[robg adds: I'll use this hint for a quick comment on my install preferences: If possible, I do an "erase and install" any time I can for a major upgrade like this. Yes, it's substantially more work, and yes, you need to be very careful that you have a complete and functional backup available before proceeding. But in the end, you wind up with a system that's devoid of any carryovers that might cause problems in the new OS. If you have a partitioned drive, this is also substantially easier -- I keep 95% of my apps on an Applications partition, so a major upgrade doesn't mean I also have to reinstall all my apps, too. I just copy over key prefernce folders and reinstall those apps that just insist on living in /Applications, and I'm good to go.]"

Although I did an erase-and-clean install, I now regret that I installed all the applications in the same partition as 10.3 rather than have the wisdom to do what Rob did and install them on another partition. That would make life so much easier the next time one needs to upgrade to another OS version.

Questions:
1. In doing this, does one simply alias the applications installed on the other partition to the 10.3.1 partition's Applications Folder?
2. If one already has installed all one's apps, as I did, can one drag them over to a folder you create on the other partition and alias them back to the 10.3.1 partition?
3. Does the 2nd partition need to also have Panther as its OS? (My 2nd partition, in addition to storing all my photos, music and documents, has OS 9.2.2 for the rare times I need to open up a pre-OS X program)?

griffman · 11-13-2003, 03:23 PM

I'm not sure what others might say, but here are my answers to your questions:

1) I didn't bother to alias my "NewApps" folder back to Applications. I just make shortcuts to NewApps wherever I might want them -- the folder sits in my DragThing dock, in my sidebar, and certain apps are in the toolbar.

2) Most apps should be 'draggable' and continue to work just fine. They'll still find their prefs in your user's folder, just like they always have. The only exceptions might be apps that install things in other places, though I can't think of many of those. I was able to even move certain Apple apps to my NewApps partition (iDVD, Final Cut Express, DVD Studio Pro) and (amazingly!) they all worked fine. I will have to remember to move those back, though, in case of software updates (which will probably fail to find the moved apps, which is why I tell others to ignore my actions and keep Apple's apps where they started

. Again, I do no aliasing back, but you clearly could.

3) My NewApps partition is not bootable in any sense. It has only Apps and Web Documents on it. If I ever have a system issue, I should be able to see the partition by booting from a FireWire drive, or putting my machine in FW Target Disk mode, etc.

-rob.

ulrichm · 11-13-2003, 03:38 PM

I do not have it htis way, but I think moving your entire APP folder to a different partition and just soft-link the entire folder back to root. This way any update will find the applications, but if you do a fresh install it will only remove the soft-link. Does this make sense?

houchin · 11-13-2003, 04:23 PM

I think this is a novel idea, but ultimately will not help. The problem is that so many applications put stuff in /Library (Application Support, Preferences, ...) that we wouldn't really be able to isolate the directories that are populated or partially populated by the OS and those that are populated by Applications.

Personally, I did my Panther Upgrade this way: Clone to external drive, erase install, manually copy back Applications + stuff from /Library. Not too much of a pain.

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 05:02 PM

I keep my /Users and /Applications on their own partitions and it makes upgrading substantially easier. I have always used the fstab method of creating the links to the seperate partitions and it has always worked great for me. Installers never complain, applications never complain, etc.

I thought this time after installing Panther I would try the easier "alias" or symlink method of linking my /User and /Applications back into the root and it seemed to work fine. Unfortunately after a few restarts it started failing. At some point the system makes a 2nd link on the root name /Users 1 and /Applications 1. It appears to be a random event, but fixing it works again for a while and then it reappears.

So as far as I am concerned the only good way of using seperate partitions is to use the fstab method and create empty dirs /Users and /Applications on your root drive. These are then used as more traditional mountpoints and this works.

Norm Nager · 11-13-2003, 08:08 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by bluehz . . . I have always used the fstab method of creating the links to the seperate partitions . . . . So as far as I am concerned the only good way of using seperate partitions is to use the fstab method and create empty dirs /Users and /Applications on your root drive. These are then used as more traditional mountpoints.

Thanks, but you've gone beyond my level of technical understanding. Please explain or give me a reference for "fstab" and how it works and how to set it up.

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 08:49 PM

Her ya go Norm. Fairly extensive article on the subject. Thats why I didn't post more info I fig most people had read it. Let us know if you have troubles after checking the article and we can help you. Looks a lot worse than it really is.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...61&query=fstab

Basically 3 steps
-------------------
1. Edit /etc/fstab
2. Duplicate your current patition to your new
3. Restart in single-user mode and move old out of way and create new mountpoint (fancy name for empty directory)

Also - I don't think you have to do the netinfo stuff anymore - I don't and it works fine. Any time you start messing with NetInfo you better know what you are doing and at the very list how to get yourself out of a sticky jam. NetInfo has the potential to wreak serious havoc on your system.

petey · 11-13-2003, 08:59 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by houchin The problem is that so many applications put stuff in /Library (Application Support, Preferences, ...) that we wouldn't really be able to isolate the directories that are populated or partially populated by the OS and those that are populated by Applications.

i agree with this. what's the point of putting /Applications on a separate partition if it's not usable if /Library on the original partition gets stomped?

i have my Users on a separate partition, but i think it's a bit silly to move /Applications.

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 09:14 PM

Actually having application on a 2nd partition works just fine AND it makes backups much easier.

petey · 11-13-2003, 09:26 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by bluehz Actually having application on a 2nd partition works just fine AND it makes backups much easier.

i'm not doubting it works just fine. using krazy glue to attach my coffee mug to my TV works just fine too.

how does it make backups any easier?

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 09:33 PM

When I backup - I never backup my HUGE applications dir. By having seperate partitions I can backup/restore whoel partitions WITHOUT having to worry about excluding dirs, etc. Clean and simple... your analogy of glue is unfounded. This is a standard technique used in most of the UNIX world. I have used it myself for almost 2 years with no problems whatsoever.

petey · 11-13-2003, 09:47 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by bluehz When I backup - I never backup my HUGE applications dir. By having seperate partitions I can backup/restore whoel partitions WITHOUT having to worry about excluding dirs, etc. Clean and simple... your analogy of glue is unfounded. This is a standard technique used in most of the UNIX world. I have used it myself for almost 2 years with no problems whatsoever.

hmmm...

i suppose if whatever backup tool you're using makes it difficult to exclude a directory, this makes some kind of sense. Retrospect (and many other tools) don't have this kind of problem :-)

but other than that, i don't see the point.

a good part of my reason for moving Users off-world is that it functions independently of my startup volume. in other words, if my startup volume disappears and i reinstall, my Users partition will work just fine - and vice versa. this isn't true for the /Applications folder because so many apps install stuff in /Library.

again, i'm not saying moving /Applications off-world won't work, i'm just saying there doesn't seem to be a good reason for doing so. (unless i'm missing something...)

of course, if you like it better with /Applications moved, don't let me get in your way.

mervTormel · 11-13-2003, 09:52 PM

well, one can get even more granularity...

why back up applications?! they don't change day to day! nothing in the app's path changes! they are re-installable!

backup data that has value:

particularly, here are the containers for _data_ that one may be interested in having a copy of:

/Library
/Users
/private
/usr/local

and off-world _data_ ( /volumes/volname/ ) that constitutes value

these are the repositories for user/system/domain specific _data_ that is of interest.

if you are spending any effort backing up the /applications/ tree on any volume, you need to examine what it is you are trying to accomplish.

n.b. there is a distinction between data that one spends time creating/maintaining and pdf's downloaded from the interweb, that will still be somewhere remote in the future.

petey · 11-13-2003, 10:42 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by mervTormel why back up applications?

not quite sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. i don't think anybody on this thread was advocating backing up /Applications. in fact, this was bluehz's rationale for moving /Applications off-world in the first place.

but i suppose even mervTormel can only be on topic 99% of the time.

Quote:


	if you are spending any effort backing up the /applications/ tree on any volume, you need to examine what it is you are trying to accomplish.

all that said, i'll rise to the bait.

i backup /Applications a few times a year (far less often than i backup User data.)

while i agree it's not strictly necessary, if my hard drive goes down, i wouldn't be faced with several days of finding CD's, scouring the internet, and running installers.

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 10:59 PM

petey - that is a good strategy and one I follow myself

mervTormel · 11-13-2003, 11:03 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by petey not quite sure what this has to do with the topic at hand. i don't think anybody on this thread was advocating backing up /Applications. in fact, this was bluehz's rationale for moving /Applications off-world in the first place. but i suppose even mervTormel can only be on topic 99% of the time. all that said, i'll rise to the bait. i backup /Applications a few times a year (far less often than i backup User data.) while i agree it's not strictly necessary, if my hard drive goes down, i wouldn't be faced with several days of finding CD's, scouring the internet, and running installers.

well, i garnered there was concern for storing applications out of the root realm and then bluehz mentioned a backup concern.

so, in an effort to further break down what is germane and to foster further thought, i thought i'd make my point.

i don't think we're on separate teams, just using separate secret decoder rings.

a fine point is that applications outside of /Applications/ run just fine.

one way of avoiding what you mention is, download apps/other stuff to a /volumes/downloads/ partition, install into /applications/ and/or your /volumes/applications/

in case of loss, everything is nearline. i've run this way for years.

Norm Nager · 11-13-2003, 11:46 PM

Quote:


	Originally posted by mervTormel One way . . . download apps/other stuff to a /volumes/downloads/ partition, install into /applications/ and/or your /volumes/applications/ In case of loss, everything is nearline. i've run this way for years.

That's nother great idea for a partition. I've kept my downloads in a separate folder on my 2nd (and only other partition, alas) and from time to time Toast them so I can have them at a remote-location.

I used those downloads and CDs to re-create my Applications after my erase-and-clean install of 10.3. But it was rather tedious when I had to use the original install CDs and then run downloaded updates for a number of applications. In some cases, such as MS Office X, that meant installing up to several updates sequentially.

That's why Rob's idea of the separate partitions for the Apps not installed as part of a new OS has a great deal of appeal.

Houchin suggested earlier in this thread that rather than maintain a separate apps partition, an alternative is to rely on a clone/duplicate of the internal drive on an external drive applications and copy over the apps and related Library/Preferences Library/Application Support files to the newly installed OS.

Question: any pros and cons in an erase-and-clean install of a major OS revision between copying from an Apps partition on the same drive vs. copy from an external drive?

The only one that comes to mind is that I might easily forget which ones I put in the Applications folder vs. which ones were installed by the OS. (Prior to Panther, I had two Apps folders, the primary one and my sole user Apps folder. I now have all my apps in the folder created when I installed 10.3.)

bluehz · 11-13-2003, 11:47 PM

When I first started using the seperate /Applications dir I always used to point my installers to /Applications and then I found out I can just point it to my /root because as far as the system and installers are concerned - the mountpoint /Applications on the /root level is the same as if I had the stock /Applications install. The only anomaly I have ever seen and its rare - is occasionally an installer will create a /Library/Receipts in the /Applications dir and put its receipt inside instead of in the /Library/receipts. I just manually move it over it it happens. No biggie though.

elvey · 06-28-2012, 08:10 PM

Hi, I'm wondering how this method is fairing in 2012 with Mac OS X 10.5,6&7.

I'm planning to try starting with Numbski's scripts.

I tried to make multi-volume booting work, after getting bad advice, with symbolic links.

Details of what I want, have tried, and my results are here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3583219

Also some ideas I have about other ways that may or may not be better.

I wanna have tmp, var, Users and some apps be on different disks. Anyone doing that?

acme.mail.order · 06-29-2012, 12:04 AM

in general it's not. Drives are much bigger today than when this discussion started nearly 10 years ago.

Some people move /Users to a different volume - the Server version contains a simple mechanism to do this via sharepoints. There are very few reasons to move /Users on the Client OS.

Redirecting a single folder to an external volume (e.g. a temp folder) can be done with the symlink method - simple, doesn't break easily, no messing about with the system internals.

What, exactly, are you trying to do and why? What kind of external disk? (size / speed / interface?) If it's a USB pocket drive then you can stop now - you won't gain anything. At minimum you will need a full-size drive in a FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt case (or a Mac Pro) to make it worthwhile.

11-13-2003, 03:07 PM	#1
Norm Nager All Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 962	RobG's idea to install applications on 2nd partition rather than clean 10.3 partition In an aside on a Nov. 13 hint, Rob made the following excellent suggestion on which I have a few questions: "[robg adds: I'll use this hint for a quick comment on my install preferences: If possible, I do an "erase and install" any time I can for a major upgrade like this. Yes, it's substantially more work, and yes, you need to be very careful that you have a complete and functional backup available before proceeding. But in the end, you wind up with a system that's devoid of any carryovers that might cause problems in the new OS. If you have a partitioned drive, this is also substantially easier -- I keep 95% of my apps on an Applications partition, so a major upgrade doesn't mean I also have to reinstall all my apps, too. I just copy over key prefernce folders and reinstall those apps that just insist on living in /Applications, and I'm good to go.]" Although I did an erase-and-clean install, I now regret that I installed all the applications in the same partition as 10.3 rather than have the wisdom to do what Rob did and install them on another partition. That would make life so much easier the next time one needs to upgrade to another OS version. Questions: 1. In doing this, does one simply alias the applications installed on the other partition to the 10.3.1 partition's Applications Folder? 2. If one already has installed all one's apps, as I did, can one drag them over to a folder you create on the other partition and alias them back to the 10.3.1 partition? 3. Does the 2nd partition need to also have Panther as its OS? (My 2nd partition, in addition to storing all my photos, music and documents, has OS 9.2.2 for the rare times I need to open up a pre-OS X program)? Last edited by Norm Nager; 11-13-2003 at 03:10 PM.

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11-13-2003, 03:23 PM	#2
griffman MVP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 1,471	I'm not sure what others might say, but here are my answers to your questions: 1) I didn't bother to alias my "NewApps" folder back to Applications. I just make shortcuts to NewApps wherever I might want them -- the folder sits in my DragThing dock, in my sidebar, and certain apps are in the toolbar. 2) Most apps should be 'draggable' and continue to work just fine. They'll still find their prefs in your user's folder, just like they always have. The only exceptions might be apps that install things in other places, though I can't think of many of those. I was able to even move certain Apple apps to my NewApps partition (iDVD, Final Cut Express, DVD Studio Pro) and (amazingly!) they all worked fine. I will have to remember to move those back, though, in case of software updates (which will probably fail to find the moved apps, which is why I tell others to ignore my actions and keep Apple's apps where they started . Again, I do no aliasing back, but you clearly could. 3) My NewApps partition is not bootable in any sense. It has only Apps and Web Documents on it. If I ever have a system issue, I should be able to see the partition by booting from a FireWire drive, or putting my machine in FW Target Disk mode, etc. -rob.

11-13-2003, 03:38 PM	#3
ulrichm All Star Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 741	I do not have it htis way, but I think moving your entire APP folder to a different partition and just soft-link the entire folder back to root. This way any update will find the applications, but if you do a fresh install it will only remove the soft-link. Does this make sense?

11-13-2003, 04:23 PM	#4
houchin Major Leaguer Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Northern Virginai Posts: 294	I think this is a novel idea, but ultimately will not help. The problem is that so many applications put stuff in /Library (Application Support, Preferences, ...) that we wouldn't really be able to isolate the directories that are populated or partially populated by the OS and those that are populated by Applications. Personally, I did my Panther Upgrade this way: Clone to external drive, erase install, manually copy back Applications + stuff from /Library. Not too much of a pain.

11-13-2003, 05:02 PM	#5
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	I keep my /Users and /Applications on their own partitions and it makes upgrading substantially easier. I have always used the fstab method of creating the links to the seperate partitions and it has always worked great for me. Installers never complain, applications never complain, etc. I thought this time after installing Panther I would try the easier "alias" or symlink method of linking my /User and /Applications back into the root and it seemed to work fine. Unfortunately after a few restarts it started failing. At some point the system makes a 2nd link on the root name /Users 1 and /Applications 1. It appears to be a random event, but fixing it works again for a while and then it reappears. So as far as I am concerned the only good way of using seperate partitions is to use the fstab method and create empty dirs /Users and /Applications on your root drive. These are then used as more traditional mountpoints and this works.

11-13-2003, 08:49 PM	#7
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	Her ya go Norm. Fairly extensive article on the subject. Thats why I didn't post more info I fig most people had read it. Let us know if you have troubles after checking the article and we can help you. Looks a lot worse than it really is. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...61&query=fstab Basically 3 steps ------------------- 1. Edit /etc/fstab 2. Duplicate your current patition to your new 3. Restart in single-user mode and move old out of way and create new mountpoint (fancy name for empty directory) Also - I don't think you have to do the netinfo stuff anymore - I don't and it works fine. Any time you start messing with NetInfo you better know what you are doing and at the very list how to get yourself out of a sticky jam. NetInfo has the potential to wreak serious havoc on your system.

11-13-2003, 09:14 PM	#9
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	Actually having application on a 2nd partition works just fine AND it makes backups much easier.

11-13-2003, 09:33 PM	#11
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	When I backup - I never backup my HUGE applications dir. By having seperate partitions I can backup/restore whoel partitions WITHOUT having to worry about excluding dirs, etc. Clean and simple... your analogy of glue is unfounded. This is a standard technique used in most of the UNIX world. I have used it myself for almost 2 years with no problems whatsoever.

11-13-2003, 09:52 PM	#13
mervTormel League Commissioner Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 5,536	well, one can get even more granularity... why back up applications?! they don't change day to day! nothing in the app's path changes! they are re-installable! backup data that has value: particularly, here are the containers for _data_ that one may be interested in having a copy of: /Library /Users /private /usr/local and off-world _data_ ( /volumes/volname/ ) that constitutes value these are the repositories for user/system/domain specific _data_ that is of interest. if you are spending any effort backing up the /applications/ tree on any volume, you need to examine what it is you are trying to accomplish. n.b. there is a distinction between data that one spends time creating/maintaining and pdf's downloaded from the interweb, that will still be somewhere remote in the future.

11-13-2003, 10:59 PM	#15
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	petey - that is a good strategy and one I follow myself

11-13-2003, 11:47 PM	#18
bluehz MVP Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 1,562	When I first started using the seperate /Applications dir I always used to point my installers to /Applications and then I found out I can just point it to my /root because as far as the system and installers are concerned - the mountpoint /Applications on the /root level is the same as if I had the stock /Applications install. The only anomaly I have ever seen and its rare - is occasionally an installer will create a /Library/Receipts in the /Applications dir and put its receipt inside instead of in the /Library/receipts. I just manually move it over it it happens. No biggie though.

06-28-2012, 08:10 PM	#19
elvey Prospect Join Date: Mar 2010 Posts: 10	Hi, I'm wondering how this method is fairing in 2012 with Mac OS X 10.5,6&7. I'm planning to try starting with Numbski's scripts. I tried to make multi-volume booting work, after getting bad advice, with symbolic links. Details of what I want, have tried, and my results are here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3583219 Also some ideas I have about other ways that may or may not be better. I wanna have tmp, var, Users and some apps be on different disks. Anyone doing that?

06-29-2012, 12:04 AM	#20
acme.mail.order League Commissioner Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Tokyo Posts: 6,045	in general it's not. Drives are much bigger today than when this discussion started nearly 10 years ago. Some people move /Users to a different volume - the Server version contains a simple mechanism to do this via sharepoints. There are very few reasons to move /Users on the Client OS. Redirecting a single folder to an external volume (e.g. a temp folder) can be done with the symlink method - simple, doesn't break easily, no messing about with the system internals. What, exactly, are you trying to do and why? What kind of external disk? (size / speed / interface?) If it's a USB pocket drive then you can stop now - you won't gain anything. At minimum you will need a full-size drive in a FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt case (or a Mac Pro) to make it worthwhile.