[X-Newbies] Migration Assistant

[Raoul Armfield]

Chris Walker wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Santa came early so I've just got my shiny new G5 - dual core 2ghz with
> 1gb Ram.  I'm now looking at getting all my stuff from the old machine
> to the new.
> 
> The old machine has one account 'Mars' running as admin.  The new one
> will have two accounts Saturn' as admin and 'BigC' as user.  At present
> BigC is enabled as admin but this will drop back to user when all the
> installations are done.  My aim was to create a new 'clean' machine
> which will last for my usual 4/5 years.
> 
> I'm already having problems with permissions so I wondered whether to go
> the easy route and simply duplicate the old machine via the Migration
> Assistant.  Only problem is that all the accumulated crud (apps that
> were tried and not used, ancient prefs, whatever else that might be
> lurking etc) on the old machines comes to the new.
> 
> Anyone any experience with migration assistant or could suggest any way
> round the permissions problems?
> 
> All help gratefully received.  :-)
> 

First of all I am a little envious :).  Second I realize it sucks to 
reinstall but if you want to truly start off with a clean machine I 
think you should reinstall all the software you want/need from the media 
and really start over, then only bring over the data from the old 
machine.  Can you rebuild the permissions using the fix permissions 
utility that you get when you boot from the OS CD or are you refering to 
different permissions problems.

Also you don't have to use your BigC account as an admin account to do 
installations.  When you do installations as a regular user you should 
be prompted for an administrator level username and password.

Finally, it is excellent that you want to have a separate admin account 
from the account you use for your everyday work.  I assume that this is 
done for security sake.  In any case, it is not a good idea to broadcast 
on a public list what the names of your accounts are on your computer 
especially not the admin accounts.  This makes a hacker's job easier as 
all (s)he needs to do is somehow guess your password.

arguably it may be a little harder to find you if this is a home 
computer but still not impossible.



-- 
Raoul Armfield
rarmfield at amnh dot org