are you saying that NO service to be launched at Startup can have any of its config, or other, data (/etc, /usr/, or anywhere else) on any drive OTHER than the boot drive? OK, my bad, I indeed got confused. i need to specify *my* issue better .... sorry! Let's clarify the thing a bit: No service mandatory to *boot* the machine should have any of its file outsid the boot drive. that's clear. Now, of course, you can have supplementary daemons loading from /usr for instance, /usr being a separate partition. and, i suppose, as well if /usr were the *same* partition, but config files for a non-boot-required-service were on _another_ partition ... the real issue is *how* to prevent SystemStarter trying to start up any services until drives have finished mounting. Understood. Looks like you're running 10.3, and I'm still stuck to 10.2, so I guess I won't be of any help here. yes, i'm on 10.3.4 ... There have been a couple of hugly hacks with 10.2 (take a look at this forum thread for instance: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129), but they weren't "clean". Basically, the idea was to force mount the mandatory volume (if not all, using "mount -a") in the startup scripts. informative ... thx! That kind of problem you're hitting is the reason why I've been pesting alot against the autodiskmount system and decided to get a properly sized "/" to work around the problem, so I never fought hard to find a proper fix, shame. :P i've fallen into the habit of keeping my <8GB ('legacy' decision ...) boot partition, _assuming_ that eventually i'll have to reinstall, and keeping it as 'virgin' as possible, with all (or as many as possible ...) my 'tweaks' farmed off to other drives/partitions for recovery's sake I never use autodiskmount thingies on my other *NIX boxes because it's usually a source of troubles and it deprives you from fine tuning, IMHO. But heh, we want a user friendly system, don't we ? ;o) :p thanks! =) richard _______________________________________________ darwin-kernel mailing list | darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/darwin-kernel Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.