Hello,
My Question:
> I am trying to relocate home directories from one machine to another.
> Problem is when I try to relocate their files using either tar, cp or
> mv
> they seem to loose their desktop settings. I still haven't
> investigated
> what else they might have lost because desktop settings are the ones
> that are easily noticeable.
> My question is, am I relocating their files the right way? If I am
> what
> file/files store desktop settings? Any other suggestions, concerns,
> gotchas would be highly appreciated.
> By the way, the "from" machine is a Solaris 2.5.1 and the "to"
> machine
> is Solaris 2.6 and we are using NIS.
>
>
Thanks to
Dave Wreski
Kevin Maher
Lee Hazell
Christopher L. Banard
Dave replied in less than an hour and that gave me an idea on what might
be the problem. After trying Dave's suggestion of relocating with "(cd
/srcdir; tar -cf - .) | (cd destdir; tar -xvpf -) as root and then again
as the user I was very sure that everything was being copied but
somehow I was still unable to get the users desktop setting on the
client workstation. I had been working on some other stuff earlier on
was just too tied to think (lame excuse) but a quick restart of the nfs
client and autofs solved the problem. I'd like to kill myself for not
doing that earlier.
Below are the suggestions that I got.
Thanks everyone.
> I think you may be not preserving the permissions during the moving
> of the
> files. You might either try the -a option to GNU cp or using tar
> something like
> this:
>
> ( cd /srcdir; tar -cf - . ) | ( cd /destdir; tar -xvpf - )
>
> That will basically write the contents out to standard out, where the
> second tar
> command will read it to standard in, and restore the files on the new
> partition,
> including the restore of the proper permissions.
>
> Dave
>
**********************************************************
> If you haven't verified this yet, make sure that all files that begin
> with a period have been copied as well. CDE configurations are
> stored in
> the .desktop directory under each user's home directory.
>
> Kevin Maher
>
*******************************************************************
> Huzefa,
>
> check that you are moving all their . (dot) files correctly as well.
> I
> believe this is where all the settings you are losing are stored.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Lee Hazell.
>
>
****************************************************************
> It could be that you are not getting the user's dotfiles (or dot
> directories) when you create the tarfile.
>
> Instead of
>
> tar cvf /var/tmp/huzefa.tar /opt/home/huzefa/*
>
> you should do
>
> tar cvf /var/tmp/huzefa.tar /opt/home/huzefa
>
> That way you get the directory plus all of its files, including
> dotfiles.
>
> Christopher L. Barnard
>
Huzefa Mohaedali
System Analyst
Texas Instruments Inc.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:44 CDT