HELP!! Need to copy invisible files!! URGENT!!

[stoid]

Ok, so I've been running Mac OS 10.2.6 and optimization after installing a new piece of software was taking 10 to 15 minutes, and so I was going to reinstall Mac OS 10.2 on my Hard Drive. To be safe, I copied my hard drive straight to an external hard drive. I knew that Mac OS X used invisible files, so I copied the Hard Drive like a folder. I couldn't get a fresh install of Mac OS 10.2 to recognize the old users, and it will not work to try and get all of the user prefs recreated (family machine, five seperate users). I am presently running in OS 9 (ICK). So I tried copying the files all back to an erased main drive (including the mach, tmp, and var files the are all invisible in Mac OS X). Unfortunately, I realized that Mac OS 9 registers over 17,000 files as invisible. Right now, I have seperateed my old Hard Drive files into two seperate folders, one that contains the visiblr files and one that contains the invisible files. What I need to do is either come up with a way to copy all these invisible files to the root directory of my original hard drive, or get my old user files to sync up with a fresh install of Mac OS 10.2.


Note: I have created a CD with the invisible files via Toast, and created a .img file of the folder that contains the invisible files, but so far no luck.

 

[Sun Baked]

Let's see you did a new install, copied the old user folders to the new OS, and went in and created new users with the short name the same as the name on the old user folder?

And the new users didn't sync with the old names?

 

[evildead]

terminal

You can view and copy all your invisable files with the command line.

at the teminal:

# ls -a

that will display all files included the "dot files" files like .filename with a dot infront of it are invisable. you can copy them some place like so


# cp .myFile /my/destonation/path

you will need to be root to do this as you are talking about messing with users files and home directories.

If you dont know how to activate root user or hot to become root... let me know. there are treads hear all ready about that topic

 

[stoid]

Yes

Exactly Sun Baked, and thanks why I'm so confused that it didn't work!


Evil, do I have to do that one file at a time, because there are 17,000 files that need to be copied.

 

[Veldek]

Re: Yes

Originally posted by stoid
Evil, do I have to do that one file at a time, because there are 17,000 files that need to be copied.

Well, it depends. You can use asterisks to copy more than one file at once (e.g. filenam*), when they are called similar. You can copy whole directories, if the files are all in it.

And I think, there is an extension to the command "cp" that lets you copy only invisible files, but I don't know it anymore.

 

[scan300]

I think you have the user set-up back to front.

FIRST make 5 new users in the accounts preference pane, with the same names as the old users.

You can then copy their old home folders contents from your backup into their new empty home folders, reinstall your apps and you have everything restored.

OSX needs to set-up the accounts and create the home folders itself. Then you're free to restore whatever you like inside them. Don't create or add user folders in the /Users folder yourself as you will hinder the account creation scripts.

 

[Judo]

Have a look at Carbon copy clone.
You should be able to find it on apples web site in the download section/utilities.

Works relly well.