On Mac OSX Pref Pane Hangs when Home is external drive

[Nigel Smith]

I have installed 5.6.14 on Mac OSX. I have installed the startup item and preferences pane and made no modifications to my.cnf.
Mysql starts correctly on start up and I can stop / start it with mysql.server, /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM and the preferences pane.

However, I moved my Mac OS X Home folder to an external drive and now Preferences pane hangs after prompting for a password. Everything else seems to still work fine, but I am concerned there may be an issue that will come back and bite me later. I have looked through the files in the preferences Pane but cannot find any clue as to what the problem is.

I have moved my Home folder back and forth and also created a brand new user with home folder on the external drive and the problem is definitely associated to do with home being on the external drive.

Unfortunately I can't find any information on how preferences pane actually works to help me track down what the problem is.

Any help or information would be greatly appreciated!