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Important caveats
Authored by: lerici on Jun 17, '04 12:59:29AM

You can "fix" the synchronization problems by editing the file /etc/rc.boot. Apple has fixed up their startup scripts so that there isn't any synchronization problem. IN fact they ensure they mount the disk within this script before doing anything at all. This is fairly typical in any UNIX environment. I have actually created a separate /var partition (UFS) and mounted it in this manner. THIS does work. Given the nature of HFS+ and the problems inherent with that file system a setup which includes only two partitions var and / make sense. The constantly changing files (and the swap files) would reside on a separate partition protecting the root partition and its critical databases from catastrophe.

As far as the rest of your commentary. Yes, it is true, some installations choke if /Applications is on a separate partition. Typically these are application updates rather than installs. Apple need only include an option to overwrite the app instead of just upgrade and I believe this problem would disappear. Unfortunately, you must often avail yourself of pacifist... or manually install the packages using pax etc. to resolve this. So far this has
not been a problem for me... of course the "vise" installers are a different story but over the last year or so they have improved significantly and seem to readily handle a multiple partition set up.



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Simple workaround for installing iTunes upgrades
Authored by: DavidVH on Jun 22, '04 01:17:48PM
With iTunes on my Apps partition, Apple's iTunes 4.5 and 4.6 updaters (via Software Update) did not actually update the iTunes application. And after the failure of Software Update, downloading the new version of iTunes from Apple and running the installer was equally ineffective, even though it ran without giving any error message. I found a fairly easy solution, though:
  1. Delete the "iTunes4.pkg" file from /Library/Receipts

  2. Download the new version of iTunes at:
    http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunes.html

  3. Run the iTunes installer.

Voilà!

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Clarification to workaround for installing iTunes updates across partitions
Authored by: DavidVH on Nov 10, '04 10:27:44PM
In case you're wondering about the previous comment: Yes, you have to download the entire new version of iTunes, not an updater. The download address has changed, too; use one of these instead:

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