Nightmare migration

[eN0ch]

Hi all,

I'm having quite a time here. Could really do with some guidance.

I'm in the middle of a nightmarish migration from an Intel imac with a failed 1TB fusion drive running Catalina to a new M1 24" imac with a 512GB SDD running Monterey. I thought I was all secure with two Time Machine backups. But Time Machine failed me. ~/Documents, ~/Library, and my home media folders all had some permissions issue meaning they were locked (red circle with minus sign thingy). So after the migration I had all my apps but none of the settings or licenses or most of my user data.

So after some research (albeit closing the gate after the horse had bolted) I invested in both iDrive and SuperDuper!. And I successfully (or apparently at least) reset permissions on the TM backups.

So then I did a full erase, system reinstall and migration. That got me my user data back. Along with some mega system issues, mainly involving permissions. Apple ID sign in would drop out every 10 minutes, no new settings remembered on reboot, Mail.app crashing, system memory and disk space filling up every few hours, etc. But I was able to successfully create a clone image with SuperDuper!. Put it on my backup ext HD beside my TM backups (all I had available at the time).

More research led to deciding to uninstall Bitdefender. That made a significant difference to a lot of stuff, especially the Apple ID sign in. And some processes faster and less resource draining. But what didn't change among others was ability to backup. TM Backups run forever and then crash at the final hurdle. So I've so far been unable to generate an up to date backup. iDrive has been running a backup for several days, but still only at 63%.

I've then tried to reinstall the system. Another permissions issue stopped that. So then I bought a new 1TB external SSD and made it a bootable Monterey installer. Tried to boot from that. And yet another permissions issue! (Something about a root administrator??)

And this is the time when my SD clone has now failed as well. The error log says the disk is full. (But only half full according to Finder). SD support have a prompt answer. But it's very technical stuff I don't understand. Suggested erase then copy "might work".

But maybe it's to do with the destination volume? What I did was copy the existing clone to the drive with the bootable installer, and tried to update the clone to that.

This is all well beyond my geekery, as is probably already clear. 🤦

Where should I go from here?

 

[Fishrrman]

No use hiding it -- you got yourself into a mess.

And -- as I've warned again and again and again here at macrumors -- one SHOULD NOT depend on time machine in "a moment of extreme need". Your experience is testimony to that.

Where to go next?
I find your post above very difficult to follow.

First, what is the situation on the NEW iMac?
Is it bootable?
Good copy of the OS?
Do you have an account established that can "get you to the finder"?
(this does not have to be your "working account" -- it can be ANY account, even a temporary one)

That's the first step. If the NEW iMac is working, leave it alone for now. That is, don't try to change anything on it.

What's the condition of the OLD iMac?
What year was this iMac made?
What version of the OS is on it?
Is it non-bootable?
Is the internal fusion drive completely "un-reachable"?

What is the condition of the cloned backup?
Can you connect it to the new iMac, and have it "mount in the finder"?

The issue with permissions on an external drive can be EASILY overcome, IF you have a cloned backup.
This can be taken care of in about fifteen seconds.

Let's get some clarity here, and then move ahead.

 

[hobowankenobi]

A bit late, but will add in case it helps or others see this and find it useful:

It is possible to restore a user home directory manually (from TM or another source). Yes, one will have permissions issues and lots of issues. Rather than trying to fix these manually....which is possible, but not easy and is tedious...there is a simple way.

1. Move user directory to new Mac
2. Make a new user with the exact short name as the user directory that was moved
3. When the user account is created, the OS will ask to use the existing home directory
4. Select YES and use the existing home directory

Doing this will automatically update/fix all user permissions for this account. It will only work while creating a new account, so if one already had an account with the exact same name, so then there are 2 options

1. Rename the user a directory BEFORE creating the new account, and use the new directory name
2. Delete the existing user first

 

[hobowankenobi]

SuperDuper has always been great, but iDrive has been problematic in the past. Have not tried it in years....but if it gives you issues, or causes heavy resource use (RAM/CPU), it may be wise to ditch it.

 

[mfram]

In my experience, TM migration has a big flaw. It's important to not create an account on the new machine with your old username before trying to restore the TM backup. That always screwed up the TM migration when I tried it. So if you make an account on the new machine before doing a migration, call the user a generic "admin" or something. Otherwise, TM backups have worked for me the last couple of times I had to migrate to a new Mac.

 

[eN0ch]

Hi guys,

Thank you all so much for the insight and trouble taken. You may take my silence thus far as symptomatic of the problem, not of my rudeness or ingratitude. I'll try to respond to at least some of your input below.

 

[eN0ch]

First, what is the situation on the NEW iMac?
Is it bootable?
Good copy of the OS?
Do you have an account established that can "get you to the finder"?
(this does not have to be your "working account" -- it can be ANY account, even a temporary one)

All of that is now better than it was. The new mac has been bootable all along and the OS itself is OK too, except for sundry permissions issues not yet ironed out.

I also now have a functioning user account, which is going well mostly.

What's the condition of the OLD iMac?
What year was this iMac made?
What version of the OS is on it?
Is it non-bootable?
Is the internal fusion drive completely "un-reachable"?

The old mac really is a goner as far as any functioning goes. It was / is a late 2013 iMac 27-inch. (Though I bought it new in late 2014 just for the record). In a sense it owes me nothing after that time. It was running Catalina (latest version thereof, 10.15.7), which is the latest OS it's supported to run. It really is non-bootable now. Neither TechTool Pro nor DriveDx nor Disk Utility can see a drive on it. There isn't even enough of it left for TTP to run data recovery. "This is an ex-parrot".

What is the condition of the cloned backup?
Can you connect it to the new iMac, and have it "mount in the finder"?

Since the original post, the following has happened:

• after several fails I managed to reformat the 1TB SSD for the clone and got a successful clone on it, all permissions looking good. So then ...
• booted into recovery
• erased the drive
• reinstalled Monterey
• created a fresh user account
• launched Migration Assistant
• restored from the clone
• Time Machine has completed a backup to the existing 4TB ext HDD. And no apparent permissions issues with the new backup, so far.

The issue with permissions on an external drive can be EASILY overcome, IF you have a cloned backup.
This can be taken care of in about fifteen seconds.

Let's get some clarity here, and then move ahead.

The good news so far:

• new computer is at least functional for most of what matters most
• I've actually got my Mail.app functional (thanks to Michael Tsai; was getting endless crashes involving SpamSieve; Michael gave me some Terminal commands to fix the permissions) (But will it hold??)
• what became clear in the latest migration was that there just isn't room for all my data on this smaller drive (could that have been the issue from the start?). So I've now got my home folder Movies, Music and Pictures onto an external APFS volume and configured the relevant apps for that library change.

The still bad news:

• still permissions issues with iCloud / Apple ID. Sys prefs > Apple ID periodically loses its sign-in
• with the above goes the system's memory of various settings which I need to reconfigure after every reboot
• still can't sign in to Messages ("an unknown error occurred")
• Dropbox is in an endless loop of crash (permissions issues) > advanced reinstall > crash again
• Google Drive also gives permissions errors and crashes
• and latest is the clone now has permissions issues on the home folder

 

[eN0ch]

SuperDuper has always been great, but iDrive has been problematic in the past. Have not tried it in years....but if it gives you issues, or causes heavy resource use (RAM/CPU), it may be wise to ditch it.

Thanks. Actually both are doing fine so far.

 

[Fishrrman]

"what became clear in the latest migration was that there just isn't room for all my data on this smaller drive (could that have been the issue from the start?). So I've now got my home folder Movies, Music and Pictures onto an external APFS volume and configured the relevant apps for that library change."

This is a good move.

But you should keep this external data drive backed up, on a SEPARATE backup drive than the one you use for the internal drive. (a second partition could work with cloned backups).
I would recommend that you DO NOT USE time machine to back up an external data drive (that only contains data, i.e., is not a boot drive).

Instead, create a cloned backup of it using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
The backup then becomes AN EXACT COPY of the source volume.

 

[Fishrrman]

Just wondering...
What happens if you boot the old iMac to INTERNET recovery?
Command-OPTION-R
at boot.

(If you're connecting via wifi, you'll need your wifi password)

The internet utilities take a while to load, be patient.
Can you "get that far"?

 

[Weaselboy]

• created a fresh user account
• launched Migration Assistant

This right here is where you went wrong. From a fresh install and a fresh boot, do not create an account... use the setup assistant migration process to import your data from a backup disk and that process will create a new account.

By creating an account, then running migration assistant you are creating all the permissions problems you are seeing.

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[hobowankenobi]

You can still fix user permissions per the instructions above...but you need a second admin account. Just go to System Preferences and make another account if you don't have one, and be sure to make it an admin account.

Once you have done that, you can log into that new admin account, and perform the steps above.

The trick here is that the user account is actually different from the user home folder, which holds all the user data, preferences, and settings. Deleting just the account only gets rid of the user name and password, not any data.

1. You have to delete the current user, being careful to select: Don't change the home folder.

2. Despite this option, the home folder name will be changed. If the user was Bill Smith, the holder folder was likely billsmith. After deleting the user, the home folder will be renamed billsmith (deleted).

3. Now rename the folder (in /Users) back to billsmith (or whatever you want the short name of the user to be, lower case only, no spaces).

4. Now you are ready to remake the user account back in System Preferences.

5. Create a new user Bill Smith, and be sure the short name is exactly the same as the home directory: billsmith. If the short name the name matches exactly, you will be prompted and want to select: Use the Existing Folder:

The last bit...fixing permissions...happens automatically at this point for the entire home folder. At first log in, you should be good.

If there is typo, you will NOT get the prompt above, and a new default home folder will be made. No big deal, you can do the process again and get the name right. The home folder (and all the user data) will still be sitting there ready and waiting.

 

[eN0ch]

Hi again everyone. Awesome help. OK well I've followed those directions. The result? Well it looked very positive at first. All was running smoothly etc. It still is relatively speaking. But ...

• still permissions blocked for home folder in both TM backup and clone (both external drives)
• still can't login to Messages (see attached)
• Dropbox no longer crashing, but endlessly trying to sync 5 files and periodically reporting inability to sync a bunch of .plist files
• Google Drive repeatedly asks for permission to load files and asking me to logout and log back in to one of my accounts
• Apple ID / iCloud sign-in still drops out regularly
• try to set up Apple Watch to unlock mac >> error suggesting the computer is not signed in to iCloud (even when I've just signed in again) (attached)
• several (though not all) settings still default back to pre the migration state on every reboot
• "sys prefs > date time > timezone" toggles between reading my location correctly and "unable to determine your location at this time"
• available drive space (according to Finder info) varies up and down in a range of 40GB (out of 494GB) within an hour (but system memory seems ok now)
• BusyCal (alternative calendar app I like): crashes every time regardless of repeated delete-reboot-reinstall (see attached)

 

[eN0ch]

One good news update: Google Drive fixed just by reinstalling the GDrive desktop app over the existing installation. (Found that buried obscurely in a Google help doc).

 

[Weaselboy]

Do you still have the original TM backup to restore from? If so, here is a workaround.

Login to the account with the messed up permissions. Then go to Users & Groups and make a new admin account called "test" or whatever. Right click that account and under Advanced Options the UserID should be 502.

Now restart and login to the test account. Go to Users & Groups and remove the UserID 501 account that has all the permissions problems. Now from the test admin account run Migration Assistant and use the TM disk as the source for the import. That should bring in your original User ID 501 account without any permissions problems.

Then restart and login to the imported 501 account. If everything is working, delete the test 502 account.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

You are probably not going to fix the permissions problems unless you pretty much "start over".
This assumes you still have a good backup.

If you DO have "a good backup", I'll tell you what to do.
(I can't help with iCloud, however -- I don't use it and have never used it)

 

[richardallan]

A bit late, but will add in case it helps or others see this and find it useful:

It is possible to restore a user home directory manually (from TM or another source). Yes, one will have permissions issues and lots of issues. Rather than trying to fix these manually....which is possible, but not easy and is tedious...there is a simple way.

1. Move user directory to new Mac
2. Make a new user with the exact short name as the user directory that was moved
3. When the user account is created, the OS will ask to use the existing home directory
4. Select YES and use the existing home directory

Doing this will automatically update/fix all user permissions for this account. It will only work while creating a new account, so if one already had an account with the exact same name, so then there are 2 options

1. Rename the user a directory BEFORE creating the new account, and use the new directory name
2. Delete the existing user first

This is very good information to save for future use...