How to change the installation drive on the Macintosh?

From BOINC Wiki

The below is a write up by Charlie Fenton, the Berkeley developer of BOINC for the Macintosh, on how you can change the installation of BOINC over to another drive, not just the default one done by the script.

Also see Tools for Mac OS X in the BOINC Wiki for updates.


This is complicated a bit by the need to set up the special permissions for BOINC's sandbox security, but it can be done. These instructions are provided with no warranty; use them at your own risk.

It's a bit unclear whether you want to move the BOINCManager application or the BOINC Data directory to an external drive, or both.

Here are instructions for moving both (you can move either or both):

  • Copy the BOINC Data directory from the "/Library/Application Support/" directory to the desired drive.
  • Rename the original BOINC Data directory or move it to a different directory on your boot drive a backup safety measure. In any case, you must now not have a "/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data" directory before the next step.
  • Create a symbolic link to the new BOINC Data directory in place of the old one. Enter the following in the Terminal application:
sudo ln -fhs "{newDataPath}/BOINC Data" "/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data"

Substituting your new path for {newDataPath}; for example: "Volumes/newDrive/myData"


  • Copy BOINCManager.app from "/Applications/BOINCManager.app" to the desired drive, and move the original into the trash.
  • Create a symbolic link to the new copy in place of the old one. Enter the following in the Terminal application:
sudo ln -fhs {newAppPath}/BOINCManager.app /Applications/BOINCManager.app

Substituting your new path for {newAppPath}; for example: "Volumes/newDrive/myApps"

IMPORTANT: you _must_ create symbolic links. Macintosh aliases created with the Finder will _not_ work!


  • Run the script Mac_SA_Secure.sh to set up proper permissions at the new locations. Enter the following in the Terminal application:
 cd "{newDataPath}/BOINC Data"
 sudo sh {path}/Mac_SA_Secure.sh

where {newDataPath} is as above and {path} is the path to the Mac_SA_Secure.sh script.

You can get download Mac_SA_Secure.sh script from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/mac_build/Mac_SA_Secure.sh This script is also included as part of the Mac OSX "Unix command-line version" downloads from http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php.

IMPORTANT: Each time you run the installer, you will need to repeat this. The installer will replace the soft link to the BOINC Data directory with a new initialized BOINC Data directory with no projects attached. You must move that new initialized BOINC Data directory to the trash and repeat steps through .

For safety, always make a backup copy of your BOINC Data before performing these steps.

Cheers, --Charlie


Original writer Original FAQ Date
Jorden 460 15-Sep-2008
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