Re: Copying over a user account #2

In article <ij1lf.2198$Kf4.2132@xxxxxxxx>, Charlie <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> > To clarify, in your example, if the directory is /Users/michael/, and your
> > account has username (short name) the same 'michael', then you should
> > go into the Terminal and type
> >     sudo chown -R michael:michael /Users/michael/
> > You will be asked for your password, and the account you do this from
> > must have administrator permissions. This is (likely) essentially what the
> > Mac OS 10.4 new accounts feature does; apparently, one has to do it by
> > hand under Mac OS 10.3.
>
> This worked... however, it just put me back where I was when I copied
> over that user's library over and his various documents.

Fine. Then we are closing in. :-)

> The user now has permissions for all its own files, but not the
> computer's desktop.

I am not sure what this last means. I can give procedure to follow, though.
It would be interesting if you try just that, check if it is working, and
the report back here. (Below, <username> is the same as "michael" in your
example above).

To move the account <username> to an Mac OS X installation:
1. From any Mac OS X installation, copy it in Finder into /Users/ so it becomes
    /Users/<username>/
Then use Startup Disk and to reboot from the volume where this new
directory is located. From an account with administrator permissions do
the following:
2. Create an account with user name (short name) <username>.
Now, under Mac OS 10.4, you will be asked if you want to use the folder
already there, to which you say yes. But under Mac OS 10.3, this evidently
does not happen so then one has to do the additional step:
3. Open Terminal, and type
    sudo chown -R <username>:<username> /Users/<username>/
This completes the setup, and one should be able to log into the account
<username>.

> This user's UID and GID are the same number (502)
> while the original one on that machine is 501 and 20 respectively. No
> idea what this means, unfortunately.

The first account that Mac OS X sets up on an installation has UID = 501
and GID 20; subsequent accounts have UID = GID = 502, ... This means that
you cannot sync these accounts via backups on two Mac OS X installations.
If you want to do such syncing, the accounts must be set up in the same
order on the Mac OS X installations. And in order to do the setup, one
must have an original account to do it from, which is why I suggested to
call the first account 'admin' (Administrator).

> I also still have 5 Gigs more usage than before (about 30% over the
> original copies of that user), I restarted the machine to see if that
> would cure it (it often does), but nothing changed.

Don't worry about it: I used the UNIX command 'du' to check the sizes. Are
your hard disks of the same size? If you subtract say 12% of the hard
disk capacity sizes (for the directory) from each the both used figures,
will they look more the same then?

> And the somewhat minor annoyance of the battery and airport icons
> showing in the Finder's menu bar without an ability to turn them off
> because the G4 doesn't show the option in the preference (the real-life
> user who is going to hopefully work on that machine doesn't want his
> preferences tossed out).

:-) Yeah, I only moved between hard disks of the same computer.

> I find it a little odd that it should be this complicated.

It seems that Apple haven't given much thought to that people may actually
want to clone their accounts.

> Erasing the
> volume wouldn't help my predicament because what I am trying to do is
> bring together two users from two separate machines -- if I erased the
> volume and put the iBook's user on it, I would still need to bring the
> G4's original's user into it... (sigh)

Don't erase anything unless you first have figure out how to do it, and it
is working, plus you are positively sure you have a backup of at least the
home directories, preferably on DVD/CD. In addition, you may want to move
some other stuff, such as applications and fonts, so you must be sure you
have that accessible.

--
Hans Aberg
.

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