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Question

Migration Assistant

  • June 10, 2009
  • 4 replies
  • 23 views

Okay, I have some odd behavior here, wondering if anyone else has seen the
same thing. If so, were you able to resolve it?

I have setup a nice, clean Mac OS X v10.5.7 base install image...fully
patched and updated, with only and Administrator account. I can create and
deploy the DMG to machines with no problem.

Here's where my issue comes in. Over the summer, we have roughly 300
teachers on laptops who bring their machines in to have them reimaged with
Casper. However, before we do that reimage, we are nice enough backup and
reinstall their data for them. The process as it stands right now, is that
they bring their laptop with v10.4.11 installed to us, and using Migration
Assistant (over the network - with a network cable between the 2 machines)
we migrate it to a second laptop with v10.5.7 on it. This works no
problem. Their v10.4.11 laptop is then wiped and imaged with Casper to
bring them up to v10.5.7, and install all applications. We then want to
run Migration Assistant (again via the network - with a network cable
between the 2 machines) again to bring the data from that second laptop to
the original laptop, both of which are running versions of v10.5.7 that
have been installed via Casper. This migration fails, as Migration
Assistant only recognizes the the Administator account, despite the fact
that the user account and data exists that second laptop. No other
accounts are recognized, thus no data can be migrated.

As a test I have installed and updated Mac OS X v10.5.7 on two machines
from the install DVD, created Administator accounts on both boxes, and
setup a Test account on one fo the machines to migrate, and in that case,
Migration Assistant works just fine. It recognizes the Test account and
migrates data over without issue.

To be safe, I recreated the v10.5.7 DMG to make sure there were no issues
with my base OS, that didn't resolve my issue. So at this point, I am
wondering if there is something with Composer creating the OS Package, or
something in the deployment of the OS via Casper Imaging. It seems to be
something that is happening between those two points.

Anyone seen anything like this? Or more importantly, been able to resolve
it?

Thanks,
Steve

--
Steven Diver, Network Manager
Adlai E. Stevenson High School / www.d125.org
Email: sdiver at d125.org / Phone: 847.415.4304

"Be not simply good, be good for something."
-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

4 replies

stevewood
Forum|alt.badge.img+38
  • Hall of Fame
  • June 10, 2009

When the teachers come in and present their current 10.4 laptops to you,
after that initial migration, are you giving them the 10.5 laptop to use
while their original 10.4 is upgraded? Or are you just holding on to it
while the upgrade is finished? Using that 10.5 as a "holding" machine for
their data?
Instead of using MA to get the data off, why not use rsync? Whenever I
upgrade a user here, or move them to a new machine, I utilize a USB drive to
boot off of and then use rysnc to get the data off to the USB drive and then
on to the new machine.

So the process for you would look like this:

  1. Boot current 10.4 laptop in target disk mode and connect to the loaner
    10.5 laptop.

  2. From loaner laptop, open Terminal, sudo up, and navigate to the Users
    folder on the 10.4 laptop.

  3. Issue the following to sync the data over to the loaner machine:

    rysnc -aEv <teacheracct> /

    That command will sync the teacher's account to the root of the loaner
    laptop

  4. If the teacher is going to use the loaner, log out as admin and login as
    the teacher, and then logout. This builds the teacher's account.

  5. Login as admin on the loaner machine, open Terminal, and then do the
    following:

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475


stevewood
Forum|alt.badge.img+38
  • Hall of Fame
  • June 10, 2009

Arrrgggghhhh! Sorry, hit the wrong keys. To re-cap:
So the process for you would look like this:

  1. Boot current 10.4 laptop in target disk mode and connect to the loaner
    10.5 laptop.

  2. From loaner laptop, open Terminal, sudo up, and navigate to the Users
    folder on the 10.4 laptop.

  3. Issue the following to sync the data over to the loaner machine:

    rysnc -aEv <teacheracct> /

    That command will sync the teacher's account to the root of the loaner
    laptop

  4. If the teacher is going to use the loaner, log out as admin and login as
    the teacher, and then logout. This builds the teacher's account.

  5. Login as admin on the loaner machine, open Terminal, and then do the
    following:

    sudo -s
    cd /Users/<teacherlogin>
    rm -R *
    rm -R .*
    mv /<teacherlogin>/* ./
    mv /<teacherlogin>/.* ./
    cd ..
    chown -R <teacherlogin>:staff <teacherlogin>

  6. Now logout as admin and log back in as the teacher to make sure the data
    is there and correct.

It may seem like a lot of work, but I've had more luck with this than I have
MA. And if the loaner laptop is just a holding place, well, get a few USB
hard drives and use them instead. I can usually hold several user folders
on one drive before getting close to filling up the drive. And if you put a
bootable OS on the USB drive, you have a tech disk to work with for doing
imaging.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475


Forum|alt.badge.img+21
  • Contributor
  • June 10, 2009

I don't usually deal with migrations here, but a ways back there were some posts regarding creating a separate system partition and a user home partition. If memory serves they were using FSTAB to point user homes within the OS itself to the second partition. This way you could blow away the OS partition whenever you wanted to as long as the new OS installed knew to also look in the second partition for user homes. Their data was never touched. I'm sure there is more to that, but wanted to make sure this concept wasn't lost. Wish I could find the thread...

I also realize this is actually a much more major change that doesn't help your current scenario, but something to keep in mind for the future perhaps.

Craig E


  • June 10, 2009

Steve,

Just to explain what we do here. We have two partitions.. Boot and Data.
Boot is our standard boot drive with our image. Data is their data. We have a symbolic link to the Users folder on Data. When we re-image laptops, we re-image only the boot partition. We advise users to back up prior to re-image in case the hard drive fails. This way we are not touching their data in any way.



Kathie Iorizzo
Lower School Technician
The Latin School of Chicago
kiorizzo at latinschool.org
312.582.6136