From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

Thanks,
Lyndon
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article <lyndon-E00344.12245019032021@pppoe-94.136.209.74.ttel.ru>,
Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

why?

if you need snow leopard, run it in a virtual machine.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

you can, but that's not a good idea.
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article <190320211236532498%nospam@nospam.invalid>,
nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:

In article <lyndon-E00344.12245019032021@pppoe-94.136.209.74.ttel.ru>,
Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

why?
if you need snow leopard, run it in a virtual machine.

Many applications no longer run well from Lion onward.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

you can, but that's not a good idea.

What would happen that makes it not a good idea?

Lyndon
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article <lyndon-4FB724.13353619032021@pppoe-94.136.209.74.ttel.ru>,
Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

why?
if you need snow leopard, run it in a virtual machine.

Many applications no longer run well from Lion onward.

not many, and it's long overdue to replace them.

but if you must, use snow leopard in a virtual machine, although with
only 4gb memory, that's not going to be a great experience. even just
using el capitan directly won't be great either.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

you can, but that's not a good idea.

What would happen that makes it not a good idea?

you will need different versions of many apps, one for snow leopard and
another for el capitan. mixing the two in one folder is guaranteed to
cause problems.

many apps expect to be in the applications folder of the boot drive,
with some even moving themselves there after being launched. stock apps
plus ones from the app store must be there. an alias will probably
break things because the update mechanism relies on hardcoded paths and
unix knows nothing about aliases. a soft or hard link might work a bit
better, although it will probably have problems too.
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 3/19/21 12:24 PM, Lyndon wrote:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

Thanks,
Lyndon

Why, for Pete's sake, would you want to do that to your machine and
yourself ;-)

I always get a real chuckle when I hear about folks wanting to jerry-rig
an obsolete device and try to make it do stuff its creators never
imagined- and which are probably well beyond its design capability.

--
Cable repairman was on my street and asked me what time it was. I told
him it was between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 2021-03-19 16:24:50 +0000, Lyndon said:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

I haven't checked, but assuming that model is able to run Snow Leopard
and El Captian, the only problem might be if El Capitan insists on
using the new AFPS disk format and if Snow Leopard doesn't like it.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

Not really. Many apps will likely need different versions to run in the separate macOS versions, so you may as well keep them on the system
partition they belong to.

Probably better to use that third partition for your own-created
documents, but again there might issues if APFS is a problem.

--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 2021 Mar19, Lyndon wrote
(in article<lyndon-E00344.12245019032021@pppoe-94.136.209.74.ttel.ru>):

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram.

you can get 6 GB (one 2 GB stick, one 4 GB stick) on those machines if you try. 8 GB will not work. I forget if it’s the front slot or the back slot which has to get the 4 GB stick, but as there’s just two choices it should be easy to work out.

I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

bad idea.

The built-in hard drive ranged from 250 GB, a.k.a. not really enough to do anything serious with El Cap, to 750 GB. a.k.a. El Cap will run out of space Real Soon Now. Building three partitions will be... problematical. Worse, the version of Disk Utility which shipped at the time really hates putting more than two partitions on a physical drive. It can be done, it’s just
annoying.

The simple solution? Use the internal drive for Snow Leo, boot El Cap off an external drive.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition

bad idea. Put the Snow Leo apps in the Snow Leo drive and the El Cap apps in the El Cap drive. Warning: ion some cases the newer versions of some apps (Apple’s own iWork apps, MS Office, anything Adobe, just for starters) may attempt to launch anyway. You might need to change names and enforce discipline.

with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

using aliases will create a mess.

Thanks,
Lyndon

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 2021 Mar19, Your Name wrote
(in article <s32v8a$7v9$1@gioia.aioe.org>):

On 2021-03-19 16:24:50 +0000, Lyndon said:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

I haven't checked, but assuming that model is able to run Snow Leopard
and El Captian, the only problem might be if El Capitan insists on
using the new AFPS disk format and if Snow Leopard doesn't like it.

APFS was a 10.13 thing, not a 10.11 thing. El Cap can’t do APFS.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

Not really. Many apps will likely need different versions to run in the separate macOS versions, so you may as well keep them on the system
partition they belong to.

Probably better to use that third partition for your own-created
documents, but again there might issues if APFS is a problem.

--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 2021-03-19 23:51:14 +0000, Wolffan said:

On 2021 Mar19, Your Name wrote
(in article <s32v8a$7v9$1@gioia.aioe.org>):

On 2021-03-19 16:24:50 +0000, Lyndon said:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

I haven't checked, but assuming that model is able to run Snow Leopard
and El Captian, the only problem might be if El Capitan insists on
using the new AFPS disk format and if Snow Leopard doesn't like it.

APFS was a 10.13 thing, not a 10.11 thing. El Cap can't do APFS.

You're half right. APSF was introduced with 10.12, although only for
SSDs at that time.

I was getting the meaningless codenames mixed up again. Apple *really*
needs to stick to the version numbers and just ditch the stupid
codenames. :-(


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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article <s33fur$181q$1@gioia.aioe.org>, Your Name
<YourName@YourISP.com> wrote:

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition >>> El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

I haven't checked, but assuming that model is able to run Snow Leopard
and El Captian, the only problem might be if El Capitan insists on
using the new AFPS disk format and if Snow Leopard doesn't like it.

APFS was a 10.13 thing, not a 10.11 thing. El Cap can't do APFS.

You're half right. APSF was introduced with 10.12, although only for
SSDs at that time.

still wrong.

I was getting the meaningless codenames mixed up again. Apple *really*
needs to stick to the version numbers and just ditch the stupid
codenames. :-(

apple uses both.
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article <lyndon-E00344.12245019032021@pppoe-94.136.209.74.ttel.ru>,
Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:

I have been given my wife's 2008 iMac with 4 gb ram. I actually have
some good uses planned for it!

I want to partition the drive 3 ways with Snow Leopard on one partition
El Capitan or less on another and a third drive.

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

Thanks,
Lyndon

Thanks for all the help and info. I believe I will just keep it as a SnowLeopard machine and not partition the drive. Would be the simplest solution.

The machine currently is running el capitan.

Lyndon
--- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113

From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

On 3/19/21 12:24 PM, Lyndon wrote:

So, question, can you put all of your apps on the third partition with
alias to the applications folder on each of the systems on the other partitions?

I'd let each boot volume have its own applications in its
respective applications folder.

This uses more disk space, of course.
But... probably fewer problems in the long run.
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