Moving files from deleted user account to Admin user account

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Level 1

1 points

Moving files from deleted user account to Admin user account

I restored part of an old user account from a backup using Migration Assistant. I deleted the user account but retained the home folder. I want to selectively move the contents of the home folder (music, documents, pictures, movies, etc.) into my current administrative account. However when I attempt to move the files out of the deleted user folder, it tries to copy them to the new location instead. This is a problem since things like my music library (200GB) are too big to copy. I've checked the ownership permissions of the files and folders in question, it says I own them, so why can't I move them?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.6GHz C2D 4GB GeForce 8600MT 512MB

Posted on Aug 13, 2011 9:01 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Aug 13, 2011 11:42 PM in response to TeamHCN

Log in to your admin account and try this pair of Terminal commands:

sudo chown -R `id -un` (hit spacebar, drag folder to Terminal window, press return, enter password when prompted)

sudo chmod u+rwX (hit spacebar, drag folder to Terminal window, press return)

You might need to relaunch Finder for it to recognize the changes.

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Answer 2

TeamHCN Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 19, 2011 12:22 PM in response to Király

Kiraly,

Thanks. I know the chown command from my time spent administering a Linux-based webserver. Same goes for applying ownership recursively. However I know invoking root authority is not something to be taken lightly. Your commands appear to work on some files, however Terminals gives an "Operation not permitted" error on many others. The files to which I did successfully apply both commands I was able to move, though it did ask for my admin password beforehand.

I'm still a bit concerned that I've messed something up. If I ctrl-click < get info on files or folders I've created in my own user account, and look under the sharing and permissions section, most list ownership as:

User (Me) – read & write
staff – read only (or else it's not listed)
everyone – read only (or else "no access")

Files to which I've applied the commands you listed somewhat different permissions:

User (Me) – read & write
_unknown – read only
everyone – read only (or else "no access")

In some cases my username is listed twice, both as user owner and group owner. I'm worried that by leaving permissions like this, I'm going to create problems for myself in the future. Is there some easy to fix these permissions, or should I just delete everything and run Migration Assistant again? I had considered running the following command:

sudo chown -R username:staff /folder

However I am not user if that is correct, if admin users are part of usergroup "staff"; also, that command mentions nothing of usergroup "everyone".

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Answer 3

TeamHCN Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 20, 2011 3:48 PM in response to TeamHCN

I would just like to follow up by saying thanks. Kiraly's answer is indeed the correct one. As it turns out there were some locked font files for which I was unable to change the permissions using Kiraly's commands, but I was able to find a solution using Terminal. If you type sudo chflags -R nouchg, followed by a space, then drag the folder containing the fonts into the Terminal window and hit return, it will prompt you for your admiin password, then recursively unlock all locked files contained within that directory and any directories below it.

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