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AU_student_iceBook · Mar 17, 2003, 10:33 AM

Any ideas?

Jerommeke · Mar 17, 2003, 11:52 AM

I don't knwo if this works but it could work to create a user with the same name on the other machine, and copy the contents of the home folder.

I am however in no way responsible for this advice, I haven't try this and it could not work and could cause (major) stability problems.

AU_student_iceBook · Mar 17, 2003, 12:48 PM

Originally posted by Jerommeke:
I don't knwo if this works but it could work to create a user with the same name on the other machine, and copy the contents of the home folder.....

I had been thinking along those lines...but wanted to hear from someone who had success doing it.
Anyone else?
Thanks

geekwagon · Mar 17, 2003, 12:49 PM

Just copying the files probably would work, just be aware that when you make a user on another machine, just because it has the same username doesn't mean that the user ID will be the same. So you will prob want to go into Netinfo manager and set the userid of the new user to match the old one.

Art Vandelay · Mar 17, 2003, 01:03 PM

Originally posted by Jerommeke:
I don't knwo if this works but it could work to create a user with the same name on the other machine, and copy the contents of the home folder.

I am however in no way responsible for this advice, I haven't try this and it could not work and could cause (major) stability problems.

I have done this many times. It works fine.

hellmachine · Mar 17, 2003, 02:32 PM

Originally posted by Art Vandelay:
I have done this many times. It works fine.

me too

AU_student_iceBook · Mar 17, 2003, 02:37 PM

Hey everybody-
I appreciate the replies, but I must be doing something wrong.
I create the same user, same password. Log in with root, copy the files old files into the new user directory, log in as the transferred USER, but non of the settings are the same.
The files are there, but the dock is default, the mail is default, iTunes is default, etc.
What am I doing wrong>?
Thanks in advance.

foamy · Mar 17, 2003, 04:47 PM

If you copy as root, then you're probably getting root permisssions on the target drive.

Try this
sudo chown -R username:staff /path/to/new/user/folder

and see if it works

Terri · Mar 17, 2003, 06:44 PM

Originally posted by geekwagon:
Just copying the files probably would work, just be aware that when you make a user on another machine, just because it has the same username doesn't mean that the user ID will be the same. So you will prob want to go into Netinfo manager and set the userid of the new user to match the old one.

This happened to me when I was first getting my feet wet in Mac OS X. I had two users on the same machine both with the same name, but different IDs. IT about drove me crazy before I came to realize that each user has both a name and an ID.

This seems to always fix any problems,
sudo chown -R <name> /Users/<name>

Replace <name> with the actually name and be sure to get the spaces the same as in my example.

Terri · Mar 17, 2003, 06:51 PM

Double post

AU_student_iceBook · Mar 17, 2003, 07:05 PM

Thanks everybody, the last tip got me going!
Thanks to you all.

Fallout · Mar 17, 2003, 10:38 PM

I always did it by creating a new user, then just replacing the contents of my Home dir. with the contents of the old one. Just change the permissions as the user whose files you're copying first, and you'll be fine.

chris v · Mar 18, 2003, 06:56 AM

Logging in as root will cause the files you copy to be owned by System. The last time I did this, I used sneakernet (Log in as old user, burn home folder to CD, log in as new user, copy files from CD to home folder) or you could use the Shared folder for the same purpose, I suppose.

CV

Terri · Mar 18, 2003, 07:03 AM

Originally posted by Fallout:
I always did it by creating a new user, then just replacing the contents of my Home dir. with the contents of the old one. Just change the permissions as the user whose files you're copying first, and you'll be fine.

Just because you make a user with the same name does not mean it will be given the same ID when you create it. I found out this the hard way some time ago. All kinds of strange things happen then.

Simon · Mar 18, 2003, 07:07 AM

Originally posted by Terri:
Just because you make a user with the same name does not mean it will be given the same ID when you create it. I found out this the hard way some time ago. All kinds of strange things happen then.

That's why he says you have to change the user permissions. If you do a

sudo chown -R new_name:staff /Users/new_name

the user ID number will be changed for all the copied files. That way it works 100%.

alex_kac · Mar 18, 2003, 03:41 PM

Yeah, I've done it about 6 or 7 times now. Its just easy to copy and then chown. Really should write a utility to do this...its easy on the command line:

ditto -rsrcFork ... ...
chown -R user:staff /Users/...

Simon · Mar 19, 2003, 03:10 AM

Originally posted by alex_kac:
Really should write a utility to do this...its easy on the command line:

ditto -rsrcFork ... ...
chown -R user:staff /Users/...

Well, this is just a quick and dirty attempt, but wouldn't this shell script "userrestore.sh" do the job (of course after having re-created the user accounts in the System Prefs on the new machine):

Code:
#!/bin/sh
#
# copies a user environment from a backup location to a
# new system and sets proper permissions
#
# example: userrestore.sh /Volumes/Backup username
#
#
sudo rm -r /Users/$2
sudo ditto -v -rsrcFork $1/Users/$2 /Users/
sudo chown -R $2:staff /Users/$2

So if I have a CCC backup clone at /Volumes/Backup_HD I would only have to do a

% userrestore.sh /Volumes/Backup_HD simon

to copy my old backup user folder to the new location and regain the proper permissions. At least that's what I think it could be. There's probably some big ugly mistake in there, so use at your own risk.

alex_kac · Mar 19, 2003, 12:30 PM

Well, yes

But I was meaning a GUI app like CCC that just executed the shell commands...like CCC does

I've had to do it manually over VNC/ssh for so many of my friends lately that it'd be nice to just point them to a nice GUI tool.

Unfortuantely, my skills are in Win32 development - not Mac OS development.

hellmachine · Mar 20, 2003, 01:52 PM

i don�t even chown.
have copied the old user folder a thousand times with no problems at all. just copy with your old user so the permissions work for the new user with the same name...
for me this worked.
btw. i push it a step further.
i have a second partition only for my user account. in netinfo, just change the path directing to the regular home folder (/YourHomefolder) to /Volumes/SecondPartition/User/YourHomefolder).
Now when i clean install the system, i format the system partition, install, and after the first login, open my user in Netinfo and change the paths, log out/in and boom, fresh system, but all your stuff is back. this feature rocks...

alex_kac · Mar 20, 2003, 01:57 PM

The chown is a safe step because on one machine the UID may not be the same as the other.

For example, I was moving a user on my laptop that has 3 users on there to a new machine that was only going to have that one user. The UID won't be the same.

If its a straight copy, I would've just used CCC. But when merging two people's machines onto one, or moving a user from one machine to another with different user sets, its just safer.