Migrating Users Between Machines

owenowen
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I want to migrate my girl friend from using my Powerbook to my Quicksilver so I can start using the Powerbook again.



Is there an easy way to shift everything, application settings and all from my girl friend's account on the Powerbook to the Quicksilver? I'm after a nice simple process that brigs over all her files, IE favourites etc...



Google didn't reveal anything useful.



Can anybody point me in the right direction?



Cheers

Owen

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    This is much easier than you imagine. Just copy her user folder. That's it.



    OS X is made for multiple users, so it stores everything in there. All user prefs, all bookmarks, everything. Just so long as she saved all her documents and music (iTunes automatically does) and photos (iPhoto automatically does), and other stuff inside her home folder you are good-to-go!



    Too easy, isn't it?
  • Reply 2 of 4
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I would set up an account for her first. Use netinfo to set her user ID and group and all that stuff to be the same. Then move the folder over and clobber the old one. That should do it.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    overhopeoverhope Posts: 1,123member
    Just as a sidenote, the quickest way to do it is using Firewire Target Disk mode.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    I would set up an account for her first. Use netinfo to set her user ID and group and all that stuff to be the same. Then move the folder over and clobber the old one. That should do it.



    once you create her an account on the target computer as Scott suggested, you may want to change her uid on the target computer to the one from the source computer. i moved all my settings over from one hard drive to another one time, and while i got all the files and settings across successfully, i found that i didn't own them. all my files and folders were owned by my old uid, which on the new hard drive wasn't in use, so the computer got a little confused. if you dont want to mess with netinfo and change the uid (which by the way, is NOT a good idea unless you are comfortable and familiar with netinfo and a unix environment), then you can (after moving her info to the new drive), change her folder's owner and group. i think theres a way to do this in the gui, but terminal is where i'm most familiar. in terminal, you type:

    cd ~/..

    cd [her short username]

    sudo chown -R . [her short username]:staff



    that will first move into the Users directory, then into her home, and finally change all the ownerships of all the files and folders in her directory, to be owned by her, and have the group related to the files to be 'staff' (which i believe is default group given to files and folders).
Sign In or Register to comment.