Anyway to mount an external drive as /Users?

[b0fh]

I am running Ventura on a M2 Mac mini. I have an external drive I want to use as /Users. How do I do it?

I've tried creating /etc/synthetic.conf as suggested by https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2...ctories-and-symbolic-links-on-macos-catalina/

/etc/synthetic.conf:
Users<tab>Volumes/Users

#also tried the following
#Users<tab>/Volumes/Users

Didn't work. Pulled the UUID of /Volumes/Users and stuck that in fstab. Did not work either. I don't really want to go into System Settings and change the home directory there, because of all the messy permission issues and other things as a result of copying everything over from /Users/me to /Volumes/Users/me, especially all those restricted folders in ~/Library.

My preference would be a way to mount an external drive as /Users, and the ability to set it up from recovery mode, so that the first boot already has that mounted. And be able to use File Vault 2 seamlessly.

Any ideas?

 

[appltech]

Won't work (if understood you).
Either because symbolic link can't be handled by macOS during loading (unless those are familiar with kernel) and FileVault can be setup on system drive only. (but you can create APFS encrypted as a filesystem)

if you need to repair permissions for couple of files (and folders):
In Terminal:
sudo chown *your_user_name* #drag-n-drop (-r but not sure if that r would work) -- to obtain, own the file
sudo chmod 755 (or 777) #drag-n-drop

 

[b0fh]

Won't work (if understood you).
Either because symbolic link can't be handled by macOS during loading (unless those are familiar with kernel) and FileVault can be setup on system drive only. (but you can create APFS encrypted as a filesystem)

if you need to repair permissions for couple of files (and folders):
In Terminal:
sudo chown *your_user_name* #drag-n-drop (-r but not sure if that r would work) -- to obtain, own the file
sudo chmod 755 (or 777) #drag-n-drop

The chmod and stuff do not work for certain folders in ~/Library. Those have extended permissions and are not something easily changed by a user or even a superuser.

 

[chown33]

The chmod and stuff do not work for certain folders in ~/Library. Those have extended permissions and are not something easily changed by a user or even a superuser.

The extended permissions should all fall under the ACL capability of 'chmod'. Every extended permission present on those folders should be available via 'chmod'.

I suggest getting a full list of the ACLs for all the folders in your home dir. You can then play around with 'chmod' and its ACL capabilities using another folder as the target.

To list all folders with their ACLs in home:

ls -le ~

A '+' on the basic permissions indicates an ACL. A '@' indicates xattrs. Those are two different things, and 'chmod' only targets ACLs. The 'xattr' command is for xattrs.

 

[Basic75]

The extended permissions should all fall under the ACL capability of 'chmod'. Every extended permission present on those folders should be available via 'chmod'.

Should, but possibly don't: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...n-denied-and-operation-not-permitted.2385465/