In a message Bruce Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: << Is there any way you can connect some sort of external (or internal) drive to the thing to copy those user folders over? (Good excuse to go out and get an external FW backup system or another internal drive)
A similar thing happened to me when I updated my G4 to Tiger, due to a flaky install drive. I eventually managed to copy all the stuff over from the Previous Users 1 folder to another drive, then reformatted and re-installed the OS with another DVD drive. That worked. The I recreated the users then moved the contents of their user directory from the backup to their new user folders, replacing everything when asked. Then in Terminal (One of the absolutely best things Apple ever did was put a working copy of Terminal on the Tiger installer disk, because this saved my butt.) I did this: cd /Users sudo chown -R username UserFolder where username is the short user name of the users you recreated, and UserFolder is their user folder name, generally it is the same as their short name. This sets the permissions of the home directory contents correctly. This is probably why the system froze the first time. It's freezing now because files it's expecting to find aren't there. In your case, once you back up the user directories, you'll need to create another administrative user to do this, because you can't replace your own user directory: Say the original system has the users Bob and Alice. If all you want are those two users, back up, reformat and re-install the OS, then create Bob or Alice as the first user (automatically an admin user.) Create the other user, make them an admin user (this doesn't have to be permanent, you can change this at will) Log in as Bob, copy Alice's files over and do the chown command as above. Log out as Bob, log in as Alice, then copy Bob's files in and do the chown command. You can do this in single-user mode as well, in which case you can do both at once, but have to do everything at the command line. >> ------------------------------------------------------- Thanks Bruce, this is the info I need. Yes, I can copy the user folders to a second volume of this drive or I can copy to another drive on the network or I can attach an external SCSI drive and copy to that. I may just try a network backup to DVD first. Just to update -- I did another archive and install this morning and the computer seem to be working OK. Although I did get error messages during the 10.3 install and the 10.3.9 update. Your suggestions on how to restore the old users makes sense to me; even with my very limited knowledge of UNIX. Don't really know what chown stands for but that is not necessary at this time. I will learn. If I run into more problems I will repost. You got me pointed in the right direction. Thanks, --glen PS. I'm on a roll this week. Turn signals on my pickup broke Wednesday, the vacuum cleaner broke Thursday, Friday I discovered 48 pages missing (the Trouble Shooting section) in David Pogue's "Mac OS X the Missing Manual" giving a whole new meaning to the title. The Blue & White broke Sunday and today the same pickup's distributor broke while driving home just about 200 yards/meters from my driveway and needed a tow. --- Broken bottles, broken plates, Broken switches, broken gates, Broken dishes, broken parts, Streets are filled with broken hearts. Broken words never meant to be spoken, Everything is broken. --Bob Dylan, from the song Everything is Broken -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[email protected]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> iPod Accessories for Less at 1-800-iPOD.COM Fast Delivery, Low Price, Good Deal www.1800ipod.com
