MB 1,1-7,1 A fools errand? Trying to transfer user from Sonoma to Ventura

[DominikHoffmann]

I am currently running Ventura on a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook using OCLP 1.5.0. Migration assistant appears to be misbehaving:

The MacBook is stuck here. I will wait a bit longer and will see, what happens.

Still, I am wondering, whether trying to use Migration Assistant to transfer a user from a newer OS to an older one will be futile.

 

[Bigwaff]

How are you connecting the two Macs?

 

[DominikHoffmann]

How are you connecting the two Macs?

Via the network, Wi-Fi. I know, Wi-Fi is slow for transferring, especially to a 2008 computer. It does have 802.11g.

 

[DominikHoffmann]

Still stuck on that screen, by the way. 35 min later. I will likely give up on that. I’ll just create a new user and will just copy the user’s Documents folder over to the MacBook.

 

[B S Magnet]

Via the network, Wi-Fi. I know, Wi-Fi is slow for transferring, especially to a 2008 computer. It does have 802.11g.

I can’t answer how to backgrade the user account gracefully from Sonoma to Ventura, but you would probably be relieved to know your late 2008 unibody Macbook shipped with 802.11n. In fact, every Intel Mac from that period is capable of 802.11n and most shipped, as-is with 802.11n. The capable ones which didn’t run 802.11n out of box, mostly Core Solo and Core Duo models, required a firmware update by Apple which, for a time, was a purchase add-on and later made available without charge.

For things involving the more recent macOS builds, including those being handled by OCLP, long intervals of time, with little way of seeing what’s happening under the bonnet (like logging), ends up being par for the course for installations and updates. It may not be beyond the possibility that migrations might take a long time, though generally migrations tend to imply movement in one direction: from one OS build to another OS build of the same or subsequent major release — not reversion.

 

[DominikHoffmann]

It amazing that a 16-year-old MacBook can run Ventura. I got it to run Sonoma, almost, anyway. I did not have use of the keyboard and mouse, including those plugged into a USB 2.0 hub. This was after allowing OCLP install some update that would ready it for the upgrade from Ventura to Sonoma and running the OS upgrade from System Settings → General → Software Update. That update got stuck at around 65% progress on the boot-up screen (with the Apple logo). Maybe I should have waited overnight. I could still try that later. I have already put a lot of time into getting this thing to where it is now, however.

 

[eyoungren]

There were a couple of times where I needed to reconstruct a user account. I'll lay out what I did and if anything is useful then you're welcome to it. Keep in mind this was all on Leopard.

First, I just created the user account as new. That way I had something to start with. Then I went and copied everything in the old user account to the new. And that's where I ran in to problems.

Since the home folder includes a Library folder, MacOS isn't going to want to copy that. But if there's stuff in there that you need, it's got to get copied. So, I enabled the root user. Then I logged in to the root user account. Since the root user has de facto permissions there was zero complaint from the OS when I copied over everything.

I then went and made sure to apply ownerships and permissions to the new account and have it migrate to all folders/files in the new account. Log out of the root user, log in under the new account.

It wasn't perfect and I had to resetup quite a few preferences, but everything transferred.

How this is going to work with SIP and Sonoma/Ventura though IDK. Maybe not at all.

 

[DominikHoffmann]

How this is going to work with SIP and Sonoma/Ventura though IDK. Maybe not at all.

I quit using ditto in Terminal to copy user accounts somewhere around Yosemite or El Capitan. It seemed like the user Library folder, in particular, at ~/Library/Containers/ contains hard links, which ditto does not handle properly. Since then I have exclusively used Migration Assistant. Skeptical, at first, I soon was won over by how well it works.

Yes, Migration Assitant works very well, except on Macs that have dropped off the list of supported macOS machines long ago.