About a month ago, my mom's iMac (10.3.9) was on when the power failed. Upon rebooting the machine, the os loaded, but the user files did not. This was because I had set up the User directory on a separate partition and the partition had become corrupted. fdisk didn't fix it and neither did Disk Utility. I finally was able to run the TechTool cd I got with the AppleCare on a Powerbook. That seemed to fix something, but when I tried mounting it with Disk Utility, it didn't mount. I tried repairing it again with Disk Utility, which further repaired it and it finally mounted.
However, while booting up before restoring the partition, Mac OS X checked the netinfo directory for user settings, and when it couldn't find the original Users partition, it created a substitute partition. After restoring the partition, the substitute partition is still used by Mac OS X when looking for user directories. When viewing the filesystem from Terminal, the substitute partition shows up at /Volumes/Users, but the original partition shows up at /Volumes/Users 1. More oddly, when I view the computer at machine level in Finder (hd's, network mounts, etc) and click on the Users partition, the original partition loads up, but when I click on the Users folder (an alias I repointed at the original partition) at the boot volume root level, the substitute partition shows up.
Apparently Mac OS X hasn't reimplemented the standard unix fstab-based mounting system, so I'm not sure where to modify settings to fix this issue. I'll be researching this some more, but if anyone has a good understanding of the Mac OS X mounting system, I'd love to hear any recommendations you might have on fixing this problem.
Edit: posting from a different machine and apparently I can't remember how to do this simple task. I lost half my post and will retype it as soon as I can.
Editx2: There, done.
However, while booting up before restoring the partition, Mac OS X checked the netinfo directory for user settings, and when it couldn't find the original Users partition, it created a substitute partition. After restoring the partition, the substitute partition is still used by Mac OS X when looking for user directories. When viewing the filesystem from Terminal, the substitute partition shows up at /Volumes/Users, but the original partition shows up at /Volumes/Users 1. More oddly, when I view the computer at machine level in Finder (hd's, network mounts, etc) and click on the Users partition, the original partition loads up, but when I click on the Users folder (an alias I repointed at the original partition) at the boot volume root level, the substitute partition shows up.
Apparently Mac OS X hasn't reimplemented the standard unix fstab-based mounting system, so I'm not sure where to modify settings to fix this issue. I'll be researching this some more, but if anyone has a good understanding of the Mac OS X mounting system, I'd love to hear any recommendations you might have on fixing this problem.
Edit: posting from a different machine and apparently I can't remember how to do this simple task. I lost half my post and will retype it as soon as I can.
Editx2: There, done.