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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / January 2005How 2 move home-dir to zip ? ***
I am having difficulty moving my home directory to a Zip disk. My preferences won't stay put. Specifically, the Dock reverts to its default icons, instead of the icons I set up. The technique I am using to move my Home-Directory is the one detailed on page 282 of "Mac OS X, the Missing Manual" Anyone else out there succeed in implementing this technique? Note: The Home-Directory gets moved to the Zip disk okay, and the Zip disk spins up whenever I use the Home-Directory. However my Dock preferences (the icons) are not preserved as advertised. Mark- > I am having difficulty moving my home directory to a Zip disk. > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Anyone else out there succeed in implementing this technique? i don't know what that technique is but the best way to do it is to use netinfo manager to point at the new home directory. be aware that you can really f.ck things up with netinfo. > Note: The Home-Directory gets moved to the Zip disk okay, and the Zip > disk spins up whenever I use the Home-Directory. > > However my Dock preferences (the icons) are not preserved as advertised. could be a permissions issue. how did you do the copy? and why of all things, do you want a home directory on a zip? they are slow and not known for reliability. > i don't know what that technique is but the best way to do it is to use > netinfo manager to point at the new home directory. Thanks for responding, this is really getting me down. Yep, I used netinfo manager. > could be a permissions issue... I looked at permissions before and after using netinfo, they were okay. > ...how did you do the copy? Thought you would never ask ;-) 1) Opened Netinfo 2) Clicked on padlock, entered admins name & password 3) Clicked name of users folder I wanted to move, "mark" 4) Scroll to "home" line, select it 5) On "home" line present location is /Users/mark 6) Double-click "/Users/mark", change it to "/Volumes/Transfer" 7) Top of Netinfo window, in "Domain" menu click "Save" 8) Quit Netinfo, log out, log in My home directory had been duly transfered to the Zip, which OSX spun up every time I accessed my home directory, however my Dock icons were not "preserved", but instead reverted to their default icons. I tried several other Zip disks, but same result. When I went back to Netinfo and changed everthing back to the way it was originally, my Dock and everything else "sprung back" to the proper values. > and why of all things, do you want a home directory on a zip? Actually, I lied. It is one of those 120 MB drives that can use either regular floppies or the special 120 MB media, but I was too lazy to describe all that. The technique described in the book is a way to move your home directory to someone else's Mac, and keep on trucking with your personal work there, using your "Zip" with their Mac. Beats having to re-configure all your preferences from scratch on their machine. However the main reason I am going through all this misery is because a Unix geek, who shall remain un-named, seems to think that a good percentage of Mac users do this nonsense.<g> Mark- > > ...how did you do the copy? > > Thought you would never ask ;-) .. net info steps snipped.. sounds good but that isn't what i asked:) > My home directory had been duly transfered to the Zip, which OSX spun > up every time I accessed my home directory, however my Dock icons were > not "preserved", but instead reverted to their default icons. how did you 'duly transfer' your home directory to the zip? i suspect the method which you copied it may be a factor. > > and why of all things, do you want a home directory on a zip? > > Actually, I lied. It is one of those 120 MB drives that can use > either regular floppies or the special 120 MB media, but I was too lazy > to describe all that. ok, but still, these aren't the fastest things in the world, and 120 meg is not a whole lot of space. consider a portable pocket sized hard drive instead, which could also contain a full install of osx. then just boot off it and voila. > The technique described in the book is a way to move your home > directory to someone else's Mac, and keep on trucking with your > personal work there, using your "Zip" with their Mac. it also may not work so well if the user ids don't match. > how did you 'duly transfer' your home directory to the zip? By using Netinfo in the exact manner as specified on page 282 of the book "Mac OS X the Missing Manual". Netinfo itself automagically did the transfer. I did _not_ specifically do any manual copying of the Home-Directory, but instead relied on Netinfo to do any moving of files, directories, etc. The way the technique works, according to the book, is that my Home-Directory is transfered to the Zip, along with all the preferences for the stuff in my Home-Directory. Supposedly, according to the book, I then mount the Zip disk on my friend's Mac desktop. Let's give my friend the name "fred" Then my friend (or myself) opens _his_ Netinfo manager, changes his line in Netinfo from /Users/fred to /Volumes/Transfer .....(the name of my Zip disk being "Transfer") ...and then I am good to go, Fred's computer using my Zip disk every time I access anything in my home directory. Naturally, when I am through 'borrowing' Fred's computer, I get back into his Netinfo and change /Volumes/Transfer to /Users/fred I don't have the foggiest idea why the procedure described in a reputable Mac book does not preserve my Dock preferences, as it should. Hope all this sheds some light on what is happening. What I _really_ need is for someone else to try the procedure on page-282 of that book, to see if it works for them, or if their Dock preferences get screwed up. Don't Panic, guys, I realize almost no Mac users actually _use_ this technique. Mark- > > how did you 'duly transfer' your home directory to the zip? > > By using Netinfo in the exact manner as specified on page 282 of the > book "Mac OS X the Missing Manual". > > Netinfo itself automagically did the transfer. Netinfo is a database. Netinfo manager is a means up updating the contents of that database. Netinfo does *not* copy or move files. If you use netinfo to tell your computer that your home directory is somewhere, when you log in, the computer looks in that directory for all your data. If there is no data there - no ~/Library, etc. etc., it's assumed that you are a new user and all the default user stuff gets created. If you want to do what it sounds like you want to do (which is just basically a bad idea), you need to move your home directory's _contents_ to the new location and then use netinfo manager to tell the system where your home directory now is. > I don't have the foggiest idea why the procedure described in a > reputable Mac book does not preserve my Dock preferences, as it should. Post what the directions were. It sounds to me like you're missing a step entirely.  SignaturePlain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting > Post what the directions were. It sounds to me like > you're missing a step entirely. I've read the passage in question (see my reply to Tom S) and while it doesn't say that NIM actually copies content to the new location it certainly can leave one with that impression. Signature"The thing about saying the wrong words is that A, I don't notice it, and B, sometimes orange water gibbon bucket and plastic." -- Mr. Burrows > I am having difficulty moving my home directory to a Zip disk. > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > > However my Dock preferences (the icons) are not preserved as advertised. Moving files to another volume will break all Mac aliases and unix soft links. That may, or may not, be the cause of your problem. SignatureTom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF > Moving files to another volume will break all Mac aliases and unix soft > links. That may, or may not, be the cause of your problem. I was wondering about that, but I ignored that possibility because I am using Apple's own "Netinfo" utility to move the home directory, and also the technique for moving the directory is detailed in a respected Mac book "OS X the Missing Manual" on page 282. I figured Netinfo would move the directory without breaking the aliases. They wouldn't decribe a booby-trapped technique in the book, would they. Perhaps they would, I dunno. Mark- > > Moving files to another volume will break all Mac aliases and unix soft > > links. That may, or may not, be the cause of your problem. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Perhaps they would, I dunno. I don't have the book. What does the process say about possible collision or user IDs when you attach the drive to another computer? What about path names in files that _aren't_ moved (e.g. /etc/httpd/users/mark.conf)? What about path names within files in general? SignatureTom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF > I don't have the book. Page 282 of the Panther edition is about iMovie. Page 282 of the version covering OS X 10.1 does indeed imply that NetInfoMgr copies the user's home directory. Page 372 of the Panther edition appears to be the same as Pg 282 referenced above. But it does NOT specifically say that NIM copies anything to the new location from the old. However, reading the page I can certainly understand why Mark may have gotten that impression... It's a bad bit of writing. Signature"The thing about saying the wrong words is that A, I don't notice it, and B, sometimes orange water gibbon bucket and plastic." -- Mr. Burrows > Page 282 of the Panther edition is about iMovie. > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > It's a bad bit of writing. Grrr, it appears that I feel victim to a bad passage in a book. I should know better than to put faith in any computer book that is 3-years old; that is 30-years old in human years. Okay, I am back to square one, I don't know how to move a Home-Directory to a different partition, or a different Mac, without "breaking" it. I don't even know if it is advisable to move the Home-Directory, under _any_ circumstances. Bad Project, think I will temporarily abandon my attempts to move the Home-Directory. Just for laughs, I will post the entire passage from that book, so no one else will fall victim to trying it out. Mark- > Okay, I am back to square one, I don't know how to move a > Home-Directory to a different partition, or a different Mac, without > "breaking" it. In general, you would copy the entire home folder to your removable and *then* use NIM to point to it per the instructions in the book. Were I going to do it (I wouldn't as I have no need) I would use PSyncX or CarbonCopyCloner or such to do the copy and then monky with NIM. That *should* ensure everything is copied properly. > Just for laughs, I will post the entire passage from that book, so no > one else will fall victim to trying it out. Based on my quick read earlier (I was about to leave the office to catch my bus so was a bit rushed) I think the info in the passage is accurate. It just leaves the mistaken impression that NIM actually copies the files. djb Signature"The thing about saying the wrong words is that A, I don't notice it, and B, sometimes orange water gibbon bucket and plastic." -- Mr. Burrows > Okay, I am back to square one, I don't know how to move a > Home-Directory to a different partition, or a different Mac, without > "breaking" it. ditto -rsrc <current home dir> <new home dir> exact paths are left as an exercise :) > I don't even know if it is advisable to move the Home-Directory, under > _any_ circumstances. for the typical user, no, but for some situations it can't be beat. i have mulitple versions of osx on seperate partitions all pointing to the same home folder, making software development and testing much easier. another advantage is what you want to do - put your home directory on a portable drive. however, i'd suggest a pocket hard drive, not a zip or super-floppy. |
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