Trouble with user account on separate drive in Mojave

Question

Level 4

2,808 points

Trouble with user account on separate drive in Mojave

I have this issue on a 2012 Mac Mini and a 2009 (firmware updated to 5,1) Mac Pro.

Both run Mojave 10.14.6

My user account located on a separate drive, after a restart, does not load (both machines have separate drives for my user account).

Instead, a user by the same name is created on my boot drive -- absent any files associated with that account -- and, logging in, I am presented with an infinite loop of "repair user library" requests, each requiring my login password.

If I log in as root or another administrative account, arrange to see invisibles, then elect the Volumes folder, I see an empty folder with the name of my user account drive. I also see my user account drive with the number "1" appended to it.

If I delete the empty folder mentioned above in Volumes and repair my user account drive, that drive loses the appended "1". I then reselect it in the Advanced option for my account in the User Accounts tab of System Prefs.

That done, I can log out and then log in to my account and find it functioning again.

Here is the problem -- if I restart, I must begin the same process all over. Every time.

I've posted before about this, but if gets lost pretty quickly in the sheer volume of posts.

I've searched for others with this issue, to no avail.

I've run etrecheck, started in recovery mode and repaired every drive (all tested fine), and started in safe mode. I've probably forgotten other things I've done in the time this has been a problem.

Nothing has worked, aside from the process described earlier. I'm hoping there's someone out there who can point me in a promising direction.

Posted on Aug 14, 2019 11:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

myaka Author

Level 4

2,808 points

Aug 19, 2019 7:48 AM in response to myaka

If at first you don't succeed, persevere.

A moment of intuition has changed things for the better.

It seems that creating a symbolic link of my Home folder and copying it to my boot drive's Users folder has had the desired effect and solved my issue on both affected computers. After a restart, I can log in normally now.

I wonder that, if I'd moved the entire Users folder to my separate Home folder drive, things would have worked without a symlink back to the boot drive? Not going to try; leaving well-enough alone.

Reply

Answer 2

myaka Author

Level 4

2,808 points

Aug 16, 2019 8:32 AM in response to myaka

Further examination implicates Logitech Media Server (LMS).

On both computers, it appears to have forced creation of a new folder representing my Home folder drive (named "Home") containing this hierarchy:

Home/"my user name"/Library/Logs/Squeezebox.

I use LMS on one computer to control Squeezebox Booms, Radios, and Duets for music throughout my home but have it installed on both (never active on both at the same time).

Reply

Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,102 points

Aug 19, 2019 10:13 AM in response to myaka

The external drive with the home folders must be available at login. If not, you will get all sorts of odd behavior.

Since it is only creating the single hierarchy, I would suspect that LMS is running before the external is mounted, or it is just hard-coded to look for /Users/yourHomeFolderName/ instead of using the system path to your home. The symlink makes it think it's config folders exist already, so it doesn't re-create them. I would suspect the latter is the issue with LMS.

Reply

Answer 4

myaka Author

Level 4

2,808 points

Aug 19, 2019 12:44 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks for your insight. My separate Home folder drives (both computers) are internal, btw, so I imagine it's more likely your latter idea. But armed with that information, I'll check the Squeezebox forums to see if anyone there can corroborate and address it.

Reply

Trouble with user account on separate drive in Mojave

Similar questions