Altered home folder to external drive - not all data available

Thanks - I tried that (duh - should have before I started mucking around with the duplicate), but Migration Assistant cannot recognise her home folder as that of a "normal" user for some reason. I've tried a few things to reset ACLs on the directories and it seems to have identical permissions now to another couple of users on that volume, but still MA (& the installer's reset home directory permissions utility) still fail to recognise her home folder on the volume. Here's the commands I used:

#cd /Volumes/duplicate/Users/homedir

#chmod -R -N .

chmod +a "everyone deny delete" ./ Desktop Documents Downloads Library Movies Music Pictures Public Sites

There is an additional one to apply ACLs to the Public/Drop box folder, but I haven't done that as I can't see evidence of those ACLs on the Drop Box directory of the other users (ls -le doesn't display any ACLs like it did for the other dirs in the home folder).

I actually haven't done the last command as I have to restart the Mac I'm writing this on to re-establish the Back to My Mac connection with my Mum's mac. Unfortunately, I find BTMM very flaky.

So - any thoughts/follow up to this on how to make MA see my mum's home folder on the backup drive?

(Going to re-start now).

Yes - it sees other users' home drives correctly. Yes - the external backup volume (drive contains 2 volumes, duplicate & Time Machine archives) was a bootable duplicate. The fact that I've been mucking around with this folder and not the other 2 & that they're recognised says the duplicate backup (by Retrospect Express 6) is not at fault here.

Well - it *is* bootable in that I've tested that it is and it shows as a start-up volume on the Macbook (but won't boot it due to it having a non-GUID partition map). I've done something like this before with it too. But, I guess that's not a definitive guarantee of it being fully correctly, just more likely.

No - haven't tried TM backups (duh - again). Might give that a go. Like to get back it's "proper home directory status" 'tho...

Thanks,

GAM

BDAqua wrote:

No, that's not the reason, Intel Macs can boot from an APM Partition no problem, they just can't Install to an APM partition. or do Firmware updates while booted from one... this assumes the OSX architecture is supported by the OS & hat it's not earlier than came with the IntelMac.

So, are those missing files actually there & you just don't have rights for them?

Well - the Macbook won't boot from the duplicate volume (if it did, I wouldn't need to do any of this). Like I said, it sees it as a start-up volume, but it won't actually boot from it. The mini is a PPC machine (G4, I think) which is at least 4 years older than the Macbook, so it may be that the Macbook won't support the OS for it.

The files do seem to be there. I don't know why the programs don't see all the data associated with them when I point my mum's user at that folder with a UID/GID same as that on the backup drive. 😟

I need to re-start again so I can re-establish a BTMM session.

Back from that now - & I can't seem to connect to it. Luckily, my parents aren't far away....

I had a brief look at Batchmod (clever name) but didn't think it would help - besides, I'm quite ok with chmod on the command line. Oh & I don't think I mentioned, MA didn't see the TM volume either. Not sure why that would be. So I was skewered there too...

In the end, there was another backup I was doing of my mum's data on my dad's machine (via Chronosync) & I got that back and after a bit of fiddling have got back her stuff - well enough until we know for sure what's going to happen with her mini. If it does come back, then I have to figure out how to ensure how she can transition to an Intel machine and back if this ever happens again. I *really* hope it doesn't, I've pretty well blown my weekend on this.

Thanks for you help.

GAM

Just an update - we got my Mum's mini back from service & I immediately took another duplicate backup, this time using Chronosync (instead of Retrospect Express). Only took about 15 minutes and guess what - it booted off it no problem! So, you were correct w.r.t the original backup - it was defective. Needless to say, I've converted both my parents' weekly duplicate backups to Chronosync now. 🙂 Just a better program.

Thanks again,

GAM