write problems after cloning machine

[mkrueger]

I'm having some write problems after using SuperDuper! to clone my hard drive to a new Mac. It appears that certain files can be read, but not written to. I first noticed this in my ~/Library/Preferences directory, but it appears to be in other places also. I did an "ls -la" on each level of my heirarchy leading to Preferences on both the original machine and the new one, and all the security settings seem the same, so I can't figure out what went wrong. Here is exactly what I did:

Two Macs:
old 1.25Ghz 15" PowerBook G4 with 80GB drive
new 1.5Ghz 15" PowerBook G4 with 80GB drive

OS version 10.3.6

Steps used to clone:
1) Booted off Apple DVD on old machine and ran Disk Utility "Repair Disk Permissions"
2) Booted up old machine and installed SuperDuper!
3) Booted new machine in Target Disk mode (held T down during boot)
4) Connected FireWire 800 cable between old machine and new
5) From old machine, used Disk Utility to format hard drive on new machine and name it same as old machine "Macintosh HD"
6) Ran SuperDuper! and cloned drive over to new machine
7) Ejected new machine from desktop of old machine and rebooted new machine

Everything seemed fine when I booted up the new machine. My dock came up correctly and all my files seemed to be there. But when I would launch an app that writes to a preference file (e.g. BBEdit), the app would crash at that point with a disk error. Finally what I tried was to move my Preferences directory to the desktop, and log out/in. The mac created a new Preference directory, and I was able to launch BBEdit and run it. I then copied the contents of my Preferences directory from the desktop into the new one in ~/Library/ and logged out/in. Now everything seems much better. BBEdit has it's correct preferences, and so do all my other apps.

However, it seems that when I launch other apps that maybe write to files in other places, I'm still getting disk errors (can't write). I'm confused because, as I said, everything looks right when I view the security on the old and new systems (either via finder, or ls -la). The correct owner and group appear on each directory I've looked at: e.g. "drwx------ 43 mkrueger mkrueger 1462 12 Dec 11:42 Library"

This is the first time I've used SuperDuper!, any suggestions on what I may be doing wrong? Many thanks for writing this program, I have high hopes for it.

[dnanian]

Hm... what you did should certainly work OK, as long as you're running a recent version of SuperDuper! (meaning 1.5 or later). I don't know of any case where permissions would get changed or cloned improperly.

In this case, I'd need to see the permissions for the involved files and directory. Unfortunately, since you've moved Preferences already we can't use that as an example, but if you have another case that'd help. Do an ls -l on both the file that's failing and its enclosing folder.

Thanks -- we'll hopefully be able to figure this out.

[mkrueger]

Many thanks dnanian,

First, on the version, I'm using SuperDuper! 1.5.3(v72).

I'm now trying to launch Eudora v6.2
On launch, I get the error: "Eudora cannot continue. Error opening your settings file. -5000 {12:1942}"

The Eudora Settings file is stored in ~/Documents/Eudora Folder/Eudora Settings

So, this one seems easier to diagnose than the preference issue, because it actually does have different privs to the original. The enclosing directory on the new system:

drwxrwxrwx    30 root      unknown       1020 12 Dec 17:05 Eudora Folder

The enclosing directory on the old system:

drwxrwxrwx    30 mkrueger  unknown       1020 10 Dec 13:47 Eudora Folder

So, somehow during the dupe, it appears the owner got changed from mkrueger to root. Here is the actual file on the new system:

-rw-r--r--      1 root      unknown       0 10 Dec 23:17 Eudora Settings

and on the old system:

-rw-r--r--      1 mkrueger  unknown       0 10 Dec 23:17 Eudora Settings

Seems to be the same issue for both the enclosing folder and the file. I wonder why it changed. Is there some setting in SuperDuper! I might have wrong?

Originally Posted by dnanian

Hm... what you did should certainly work OK, as long as you're running a recent version of SuperDuper! (meaning 1.5 or later). I don't know of any case where permissions would get changed or cloned improperly.

In this case, I'd need to see the permissions for the involved files and directory. Unfortunately, since you've moved Preferences already we can't use that as an example, but if you have another case that'd help. Do an ls -l on both the file that's failing and its enclosing folder.

Thanks -- we'll hopefully be able to figure this out.

[dnanian]

When you made this clone, were you logged in as root? Also, what version of OSX were you running?

The problem here is that the original files have strange ownership. If you boot from the original drive, and do an "sudo ls -l" on this same folder, you'll see that ownership changes to root.

SuperDuper! 1.5 should handle this explicitly on the fly, and I just re-verified the fix here. Clearly there's something a bit unusual about your case.

Could you send your SuperDuper! log from the old machine to the support address? I'll take a look and see if I can find an explanation.

[mkrueger]

Originally Posted by dnanian

When you made this clone, were you logged in as root? Also, what version of OSX were you running?

I was running as user "mkrueger" when I made this clone. It's OS X 10.3.6.

Originally Posted by dnanian

Could you send your SuperDuper! log from the old machine to the support address? I'll take a look and see if I can find an explanation.

I've just sent it to support at shirt-pocket .com

Thanks again for your help.

[dnanian]

OK: there's nothing in the log that would explain this, unfortunately. I've done tests here to reproduce your case, and from what I can tell from these tests the files are copied properly, with the expected ownership.

I can give you instructions to repair the problems off-line (I'll send them as a reply to your log), but -- if possible -- could you re-clone with the current version of SuperDuper!, after verifying that the files on the original drive do, indeed, change ownership when you do the "sudo ls -l" as mentioned above, then see if -- after copying -- those files continue to do that on the clone (before booting from it)?