OSX Filter: Moving a user account to a different machine...

July 13, 2005 12:05 PM

OSX Filter: Moving a user account to a different machine...

(Apple & AskMeFi search fails to come up with an exact answer. This is very helpful but not specific to my issue.)

I am assisting a local nonprofit with their Mac network. I need to swap two user accounts between machines (Mac1 gets User2's files, Mac2 gets User1's files). Not having done this before, I don't want to lose data or waste time. Should retain all preferences, desktop pix etc. Both machines are older iMacs running 10.3.9.

Is this as simple as:

1) zip all User1 files on Mac1
2) create new account on Mac2 named "User1"
3) move files to Mac2 & unzip everything into the clean "User1" account, overwriting the default folders
4) Disk Utility / repair privileges on Mac2

...lather, rinse, repeat for User2?

posted by omnidrew to computers & internet (11 comments total)

The uid's (the number that represents the account name) will likely be different from Mac1 to Mac2 — and I'm not certain that Disk Utility's fix-permissions will address that.

To do this and be certain of the results, you will want to enable the root account on the second Mac, log out from User1 and log in as root, copy the folders over to /Users/User1, and then use chown to address permissions:

chown -R username:username /Users/username

...where username = User1's account name.

This will recursively change ownership on the specified folder and its contents to the correct uid and gid on the second Mac.
posted by Rothko at 12:17 PM on July 13, 2005

Oh, and you will want to disable the root account in Netinfo Manager afterwards, for security reasons.
posted by Rothko at 12:18 PM on July 13, 2005

I bet it'd be a whole lot easier to put their files onto a portable hard drive or network server and just set up new accounts for them.
posted by k8t at 12:31 PM on July 13, 2005

I just did this yesterday -- OS X has a migration tool: Migration Assistant in Apps/Utilities.

It worked perfectly except that it seems like app-specific settings occasionally need to be changed over to the new user folder.
posted by o2b at 12:36 PM on July 13, 2005

You shouldn't need to enable the root account; just log in as somebody who can administer the computer, then use sudo:

sudo chown -R username:username /Users/username

Enter your password when when prompted.
posted by ldenneau at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2005

o2b, the Migration Assistant must be part of 10.4 -- these 2 machines are still on 10.3.9 (i.e., I could not find anything on my Tiger machine called "Migration")
posted by omnidrew at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2005

omnidrew, on Tiger, the Migration Assistant is in the utilities folder.

As far as I can tell, it will transfer entire users but not individual files/apps.
posted by dobbs at 1:53 PM on July 13, 2005

Back in 10.3, Migration Assistant was called "Setup Assistant". Look for it in /Applications/Utilities/
posted by rajbot at 1:55 PM on July 13, 2005

Weird -- I am not seeing "Setup Assistant" on my machine either. I'll look for it on the machines I will be working on.

Oh well, I'll give it a go with the command line.
posted by omnidrew at 3:17 PM on July 13, 2005

I have a piggyback question...

When trying to use the Migration Manager with the "old" machine (grabbing from) having a partitioned drive, it doesn't seem to work. (Finds the user but hangs on the next step.)

Any idea why?

(And why on earth would someone haver partioned a Mac formatted drive in this day and age? It's only 80gb.)
posted by dobbs at 5:21 PM on July 13, 2005

To transfer the files, I would suggest using RsyncX (free utility) - it will preserve permissions and metadata that may be lost if you use other methods to move it around.

I would:

1. Create user account for user1 on machine2
2. boot machine2 in target disk mode, connect to machine1 with firewire
3. from machine1, erase contents of newly-created user1 home dir on machine2 (I usually leave the empty home directory there, because I'm lazy)
4. use RsyncX to back up contents of machine1's user1 home dir to newly empty user1 homedir on machine2
5. execute chown command (as discussed above) on machine2's user1 home dir.

Then do it again for user2.
posted by sluggo at 10:51 AM on July 14, 2005