[slugslugslug]

The girlfriend is getting a Mac mini soon, and I want to migrate her user account from my Powerbook to the mini. I know it'd be possible to use that setup assistant, but I also want the short name to be different on the mini.

Here's what I figured I'd do. Set up the mini with a brand new user for her and copy over the contents of her important user folders, including ~/Library/Preferences

Are there any really disastrous possible outcomes with this? I would imagine usernames shouldn't be hard-coded in any app's preferences, but just want to double-check if there's anywhere folks think this scheme might choke.

Thanks.
Y

[larkost]

I would go ahead and use the setup tool to move the account over, then change the sort name. There is a nice hint over at MacOS X Hints about how to do this, and it includes a link to another hint as to how to do it more manually.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by larkost:
I would go ahead and use the setup tool to move the account over, then change the sort name. There is a nice hint over at MacOS X Hints about how to do this, and it includes a link to another hint as to how to do it more manually.

Agreed this is going to give you a more consistent user experience than just copying preferences.

[jdogg99]

Awhile back I just copied all my documents and prefs from an old iMac to a new Powerbook, with a slightly different username (I didn't realize it at the time). I did run into problems, but if I remember correctly, it was only with iTunes. The library file references music by file path, and with a different username it became very confused. I fixed it by editing the library file in a text editor, but I wouldn't recommend just copying things--definitely use the setup program.

[slugslugslug]

Originally posted by larkost:
I would go ahead and use the setup tool to move the account over, then change the sort name. There is a nice hint over at MacOS X Hints about how to do this, and it includes a link to another hint as to how to do it more manually.

Thanks, y'all. Boy do I feel dumb for not even doing a search. I just thought I remembered reading somewhere that it was a bad idea to change short names and there was no reliable way to do it..

I'm gonna just change the short name while the accounts still on the PB, just to make sure it works..

Thanks again.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by slugslugslug:
The girlfriend is getting a Mac mini soon, and I want to migrate her user account from my Powerbook to the mini. I know it'd be possible to use that setup assistant, but I also want the short name to be different on the mini.

Here's what I figured I'd do. Set up the mini with a brand new user for her and copy over the contents of her important user folders, including ~/Library/Preferences

Are there any really disastrous possible outcomes with this? I would imagine usernames shouldn't be hard-coded in any app's preferences, but just want to double-check if there's anywhere folks think this scheme might choke.

Thanks.
Y

This would be pretty easy...

1) Boot the NEW system into firewire target disk mode, before doing ANYTHING
2) Copy her entire home directory (/Users/shortname) to the new machine, in /Users
3) Change the short name from old to new: cd /Volumes/Firewirevolume/Users; mv oldshortname newshortname
4) Fire up the new machine, log in as the 'new' short name that you created. You should see everything as it was before, though there's a chance you'll get all sort of permissions errors. Ignore them.
5) Change the ownership... chown -R newshortname:newshortname /Users/newshortname

voila, done.

[Millennium]

I agree with the others; use the setup tool as normal, and then change the user's shortname.

Every user in Unix has a number stored to them, called the user id or uid for short. This is the real way that the system identifies the user; usernames are just there for our convenience. By default no two users have the same uid, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Two users can have the same uid if you deliberately make it happen, but if you do this then they are considered the same user; everything done by one will affect the other.

I'm bringing this up because changing a user's shortname does not change that user's uid. That's what makes this trick possible. The filesystem will still keep track of that user's files as normal, because it only knows about the uid, and you haven't changed that even though you've changed the username.