Moving over user accounts without migration assistance

At 12:20 PM -0800 2005/12/06, r2ggentlysloping.com wrote:
>I am wondering if people can help with a move, okay, nothing too
>heavy to lug up the stairs, I just need to move a user account intact
>from one old computer to the another... After seeing the migration
>assistant in Tiger, I thought I could try something like it from a
>laptop to a desktop both running Panther (10.3.9)-- the caveat is
>that the desktop already has an existing user account that needs to
>be preserved.
>
>I borrowed the setup assistant that comes with later versions of
>panther (supposedly the same as the migration assistant), alas, it
>would only create a new account, it would not let me move files from
>another computer (well, at least it didn't erase the existing account
>on the desktop). I have copied just the "users" part using carbon
>copy cloner in T mode, I have dragged over the whole home folder and/
>or individual folders and wrote over the user/library folder...
>
>The best result I got was that the settings appear to have been moved
>from the laptop yet the Macintosh HD/Desktop has a lock icon in the
>new user (no permissions). I am not sure how that matters (or what
>that desktop is for) but I have a worse problem, because in the
>latest effort when I dragged over the entire home folder, the new
>user took almost half as much more of hard drive space than my
>previous copying attempts (18 rather than 12-13 gigs). it's a big
>problem and I have no idea how it happened -- I have deleted said
>user in the "immediately" mode before copying the files again, there
>is no "old/deleted user account" taking up space on that hard drive.

        Something's wrong if the folder really got bigger during
transfer, but that should be a normal copy.

        You *should* be able to do this pretty simply, but there's a
bit of swapping if you avoid the command line. It would be simpler if
you were familiar with the "cp" & "chown" commands.

        I will assume you have two systems (old & new), with hard
disks named old & new, and 2 accounts: moverold and adminnew
(adminnew must be an administrative user).

        new: In System Preferences:Accounts, create mover.
        new: Log in as mover.
        old: Go into Target Disk Mode.
        Connect old (in TDM) to new.
        new (as mover): Get Info on old; confirm Ignore Permissions is checked.
        new (as mover): Create /Users/TEMPORARY folder.
        new (as mover): Copy /Users/mover from old to new's
/Users/TEMPORARY folder.
        new (as mover): Verify the copy's size matches the original closely.
        new (as mover): Eject old.
        old: Shut down.
        new: Log out & log back in as admin.
        new (as admin): Go to /Users. Rename /Users/mover (should be
basically empty) to /Users/mover.empty.
        new (as admin): Move /Users/TEMPORARY/mover (copied from old)
up to /Users (out of TEMPORARY).
        new: Log out & back in as new.
        new (as mover): You should be all set, with correct
permissions, but aliases to the old hard disk may be broken.

        In the abstract, you need to have a valid account on the new
system, replace its homedir, and give ownership of the homedir to the
account.


                                                Good luck,


                                                Chris Pepper
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 12:20 PM -0800 12/6/05, r2ggentlysloping.com wrote:
>I am wondering if people can help with a move, okay, nothing too
>heavy to lug up the stairs, I just need to move a user account intact
>from one old computer to the another... After seeing the migration
>assistant in Tiger, I thought I could try something like it from a
>laptop to a desktop both running Panther (10.3.9)-- the caveat is
>that the desktop already has an existing user account that needs to
>be preserved.

        I have had success with the following procedure on a pair of
networked machines, or machines in target-disk-mode: Log onto the new
system and create new account, let us call it "account-new". Log onto
account-new. Rename the account-new /Users/account-new/Library file
something like "/Users/account-new/Library-old", mount the old system via
the network or target-disk-mode, and copy over the
/Users/account-old/Library file to /Users/account-new/Library. Copy over
any of the other contents of /Users/account-old/Documents,
/Users/account-old/Music, /Users/account-old/Photos, etc.

        Log out and log back in, and trash the
/Users/account-new/Library-old file - since it is the default set of
preferences, there is nothing in it that needs to be preserved. With the
old Library files copies over, all of the account-old settings for pretty
much everything should be working fine.

        Since both machines are running 10.3.9 there should be no issues
with incompatibilities.

        Note that this will probably not transfer over any of the
system-wide settings such as time-zones or network setups.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://public.xdi.org/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *