HELP!!!--preferences just vanished

[joeliethegoalie]

Give 3 things:

1) The creation date of many of the items in your ~/Library (yesterday & today)..
2) The lack of folders that I would expect to see in a Library folder in use for a couple months..
3) The issues that you've described..

I'm going to have to go with this assessment:

When you were using Transmission, you accidently overwrote (or something similar) your own Library folder with someone else's when you were downloading with Transmit.

Were you using FTP or SFTP to copy stuff from someone else's Mac?

At this point, there's no 'going back', so you're going to have to rely on your last good backup to fix this mess.

I guess that could be the cause. I was attempting to download some files (music and art files for a CD release) from someone else's FTP but Transmit hung up before I actually started downloading anything so I Force Quit.

Before doing that, I did get a weird message from Transmit that, unfortunately, I didn't read closely because I was distracted by someone in my office. I think the message had an "X" in it. XPanel or XFilter, I don't know. I'm kicking myself for not reading that closely.

It gave me the option to Stop or Continue. I guess maybe I hit continue and that's what screwed me.

In fact, that must be what happened b/c, in my Finder, the file I intended to download to is just above the Library.

I'm just not sure why it actually overwrote all of that.

At least I've got a fairly recent backup. I'm just bummed I haven't Time Machined recently.

Would comparing my HD to my b/u and moving any missing files from the b/u to the HD, then restarting, solve a lot of this? Or is there more to it than that?

Thanks (again).

 

[merl1n]

Nope. Ordered it new the day they came out.

uid=501(joel) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),98(_lpadmin),101(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),81(_appserveradm),79(_appserverusr),80(admin)

It's possible the 502 is a result of some migration issues I vaguely recall having. Possible?

But then his id wouldn't return "sivad"

But based on the above, his id is 501 (joel) which he created when he first configured the mac, but before he did the migration.

That's why I suggested he turn automatic logins off and log out. If both names appear in the login screen, he may have two separate accounts.

Either that or I'm misunderstanding something in the posts in this thread.

 

[yellow]

But based on the above, his id is 501 (joel) which he created when he first configured the mac, but before he did the migration.

That's why I suggested he turn automatic logins off and log out. If both names appear in the login screen, he may have two separate accounts.

Either that or I'm misunderstanding something in the posts in this thread.

There's no home directory associated with the "joel" user. So even if he logged in with that user, he'd end up with a home directory created, unless he's bound to AD/OD and home directories are mounted remotely. Which doesn't appear to be the case.

And there's nothing hidden from us in /Users/sivad. Nothing associated with the user "joel".

And he's clearly currently logged in as "sivad", and even if it were autologin, it seems very unlikely to magically switch users from joel -> sivad and delete his /Users/joel account.

Anything is possible, but I find it much more likely that he accidently overwrote some of his home directory with whomever he was FTPing from.

 

[joeliethegoalie]

But based on the above, his id is 501 (joel) which he created when he first configured the mac, but before he did the migration.

That's why I suggested he turn automatic logins off and log out. If both names appear in the login screen, he may have two separate accounts.

Either that or I'm misunderstanding something in the posts in this thread.

I'm looking at Account Prefs.

There's My Account, actually called Joelio, not Sivad, but Sivad is the User name and is the account I've been using.

I see in Other Accounts the original Joel account, but it's greyed out, as is Guest Account.

I'm a little reluctant to play with the accounts though--esp. in the middle of the work day.

 

[merl1n]

There's no home directory associated with the "joel" user. So even if he logged in with that user, he'd end up with a home directory created, unless he's bound to AD/OD and home directories are mounted remotely. Which doesn't appear to be the case.

And there's nothing hidden from us in /Users/sivad. Nothing associated with the user "joel".

And he's clearly currently logged in as "sivad", and even if it were autologin, it seems very unlikely to magically switch users from joel -> sivad and delete his /Users/joel account.

Anything is possible, but I find it much more likely that he accidently overwrote some of his home directory with whomever he was FTPing from.

I concur. This is pretty messed up. Hope he has some backups.

 

[joeliethegoalie]

Anything is possible, but I find it much more likely that he accidently overwrote some of his home directory with whomever he was FTPing from.

That sounds pretty logical to me. The thing is, there's nothing downloaded from the FTP--I force quit before downloading anything.

I guess I wiped that stuff when I stupidly OK'd that mystery message, but didn't actually download anything b/c I then force quit. Is that feasible?