Duplicate user account

I'm not sure what you have in mind as a goal and how you intend to get there.

Something to be aware of, though, is that in addition to a long name, short name, and password, a user account also carries a special number called a UID (user ID number), which is usually assigned in the order the account was created, starting with the number 501, and it is that UID number that is used by the system to keep track of file ownership. It is possible for a newly created account to have the same names and password as a previously deleted account and yet not own the previous account's files because of a different UID. For example if there is a UID mismatch between a user account and items on an external drive, the new user account may be unable to immediately access any protected items there that were created by the former user account, even if the names and password of the new account are the same as the old.

I convinced myself of this with this experiment that I ran last year:

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I have a "test clone" on an external drive that I use for tinkering. On my internal drive there is an account named "t", with parameters as follows:

Longname: t; Shortname: t; UID: 503

.

While booted from the external drive, I set up two accounts there as follows:

Longname:t; Shortname: t ; UID 504

and

Longname:harry; Shortname: harry; UID: 503

The question then is when booted from the external drive, which user can access the restricted "t" subfolders (Documents, Music, etc) on the internal drive, the user with the matching shortname or the user with the matching UID?

The answer is harry, the user with the same UID but a different shortname! User "harry" had full access to the "t" files on the internal drive despite the different name; while the 't" user on the external drive could not see into the restricted subfolders of "t" on the internal drive.

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Even so, there should be ways of getting around this as an operational issue if the external drive is a data disk or clone. I don't know about Time Machine.

Mattand wrote:

If I delete my account and recreate it with the same short, long username, and password will I still be able to access my files?

Assuming this is possible, how do you know that being 'able to access my files' doesn't mean that the problem will be re-created? After all, you don't know what the problem is. This KB article

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428>

may have the answer to the proximate problem. But it may not solve the real issue, ie, getting Painter 11 to behave.

IMHO, you should go either of two ways. Troubleshoot the Painter problem until you fix it, or create a new user account and bring over the old files, changing owner and permissions as required (I suspect that changing owner is enough, and that could be done, using find and chown, in a single pass). This

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3309>

shows you how to do it the easy (but tedious) way.

Here's my question: If I delete my account and recreate it with the same short, long username, and password will I still be able to access my files? In other words, will be able to just simply add back files without experiencing permissions issues (particularly stuff in the Home folder)?

Assuming you can do that what's the point? Nothing would have changed in that account? Whatever is wrong with that account would still be preserved.

I'm having a problem in my account where a specific program misbehaves and no amount of troubleshooting is solving the problem (including reinstallation.) The program in question (Painter 11) behaves fine on the other 2 accounts on this machine.

What does "misbehaves" mean? What happens?

Is Painter 11 only powerpc code? If it is there should be some indication of that in the finder Get Info of that file (app).

I'm guessing that there's some 3rd party software or utitlty that's causing Painter to misbehave.

I would try a Safe Boot if you haven't already done so.

If the Safe Boot still shows the problem, then I would test for the presence of a "Flashback" trojan, although it seems to me unlikely in your particular case. This can cause applications to fail in one user account but not in others, with the problem apparently not originating in the user Preference folder. A common manifestation is that PPC programs crash completely, but it's at least conceivable that it could also cause an Intel program to have impaired function.

Although perhaps a longshot, the test is easy. Log into the affected user account, and launch Terminal (in the Utilities folder). Copy-paste the following line into the Terminal window, and then press <return>:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment

Copy the response you see, and post it back here. If you see something like this, you are OK:

Domain /Users/<username>/.MacOSX/environment does not exist

However a response that includes something similar to this means trouble:

"DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" = "/Users/Shared/.libgmalloc.dylib"