Install DarwinPorts on a FireWire drive

Oct 11, '05 05:22:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

As my 30GB iBook hard drive was getting full, I had to clean out a lot of DarwinPorts apps. However, I discovered that you can install DarwinPorts to a FireWire drive, instead of the internal hard drive. When you install a program, the full package will not install, but just use symlinks instead.

Assuming you have a FireWire drive named FireWireDrive, open a Terminal and type:

$ cd /
$ mkdir /Volumes/FireWireDrive/opt
$ ln -s /Volumes/FireWireDrive/opt opt/
Then, install the DarwinPorts package installer. When you want to install other apps, simply type:
$ /opt/local/bin/port install application_name
The install will then place the app on the FireWire drive, not the internal drive. You'll not notice any difference in speed, etc. Now I have 100GB of space for X11 apps!

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one, but it makes sense -- there's no reason that symbolic links shouldn't work...]

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