SSD installed home folder

deano · 12 Nov 2012 at 22:17

Hi,

have upgraded my 2011 mac mini to have a SSD for a boot disk

nice performance boost :cool:

Being a linux person I thought I could just symbolically link the /Users folder to the original disk that came in the mac mini......apparently not.

I have rsycn'd the /Users folder over using -avp switches and then created a symbolic link, it moans about permissions logging in as users. manually add permissions to the users folder still has issues, not retaining settings eg do you want chrome to be you default browser.

I've moved the users folders to the sata disk in finder and then in system preferences users under advanced options changed the location of the home folder but still is not happy.

I've removed the users and created a symbolic link and then tried to restore from time machine, which fails as it says there is not enough space. Would suggest that time machine is not configured to follow symbolic links?

Is there something that i've missed...? or is it just not possible on mountain lion?

thanks

slinxy · 15 Nov 2012 at 07:04

Hi Mate...

The best thing to do is enable root, delete your new account and all sym-links.. as I'm not clear on what your done.

Create a new admin account; Delete the home folder for this new account. then within user accounts ctrl + click on the account to get to advance options. in there there's home directory, re point that to the old profile user folder (it may be wise to actually rename the folder to match your short name)

If your username (UUID) differs from your old one, use

Code:

chown -R <your new short username> <your old home folder>

in terminal to take ownership of the folder.

log out as root and log in as your new user and it should work, I've done this several times as I always keep my home folder on a different partition or drive.

clear as mud??

I understand what you was trying to do with sym-links, but I don't see the point of it as I normally use them to refer different users on a multiple user unix/linux/mac system to same file, so one person gets the data under a different name, but no other user should be messing with your home folder files themselves.

deano · 15 Nov 2012 at 07:56

so enable root, login as root, create new user and remap home folder, chown with new username/UUID

thanks very much I'll give that a go

slinxy · 15 Nov 2012 at 08:05

yes..
you need to change ownerships of the files else you will get permissions issues.

you could delete the original user folder, and create a sym-link to a new user folder on the other drive, then all users will have there home folders on the other drive. I've not needed to do this myself.

any old user folders will have to chown to the user again but new users should get there account automatically created in that folder.

Doug · 15 Nov 2012 at 18:28

Or you could leave it where it is and just move 'the big stuff' (iTunes folder, Movies etc) to the bigger disk?

bloodiedathame · 15 Nov 2012 at 21:31

In Accounts if you ctrl-click you will have advanced options and can point your home folder to a user account on another drive. (Is this what you mean?)

FreeStream · 15 Nov 2012 at 22:01

Don't bother. I used to have this setup and its more hassle than its worth. Also quite a few regularly accessed files are in user/Library.

Keep it on the SSD and move other folders.