How to open Mavericks (user) home folder, older OS X

[jarppi]

Hi,
how can i open mavericks (user) home folder using 10.8.5?
firefault2 is turned on in mavericks.

thanks

 

[jarppi]

?

Anyone pls?

I can't use maverick anymore (its freezing after start),
but if i can i like to save some data from my desktop, library etc

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi,
how can i open mavericks (user) home folder using 10.8.5?
firefault2 is turned on in mavericks.

thanks

I'm not sure if this will work, but give it a try. Boot to 10.8 then attach the 10.9 disk and start Disk Util. Mount the 10.9 disk then in the Disk Util file menu select unlock and enter your password. That should open the "vault" and give you access to the 10.9 drive. From there you should be able to copy files from the 10.9 user space with the sudo command in Terminal.

 

[jarppi]

I'm not sure if this will work, but give it a try. Boot to 10.8 then attach the 10.9 disk and start Disk Util. Mount the 10.9 disk then in the Disk Util file menu select unlock and enter your password. That should open the "vault" and give you access to the 10.9 drive. From there you should be able to copy files from the 10.9 user space with the sudo command in Terminal.

hi,
a big thank you for your help.
i'm not familiar how to use Terminal.
i can find it, but no idea how it works

 

[chown33]

hi,
a big thank you for your help.
i'm not familiar how to use Terminal.
i can find it, but no idea how it works

Step 1 is to get Disk Util to open and mount the encrypted drive. Did you try that yet? Did it work? If so, did the disk appear in Finder?

If the disk appears in Finder, then you don't need Terminal. If the encrypted disk doesn't open at all, then using Terminal to copy files is irrelevant.

If Disk Util is unable to mount the encrypted disk, then there MAY be a Terminal command that can do it instead. But try Disk Util first, and see if the disk appears in Finder. Because if that works, then Terminal can be avoided completely.

 

[Weaselboy]

But try Disk Util first, and see if the disk appears in Finder. Because if that works, then Terminal can be avoided completely.

If what I suggested works, it just unlocks the drive and mounts the Macintosh HD core storage volume, but it does not login to the user account on the 10.9 disk. How do you propose copying files from the user account under 10.9 in Finder if not logged in to the account?

I'm not being sarcastic. Serious question.

 

[jarppi]

Step 1 is to get Disk Util to open and mount the encrypted drive. Did you try that yet? Did it work? If so, did the disk appear in Finder?

If the disk appears in Finder, then you don't need Terminal. If the encrypted disk doesn't open at all, then using Terminal to copy files is irrelevant.

If Disk Util is unable to mount the encrypted disk, then there MAY be a Terminal command that can do it instead. But try Disk Util first, and see if the disk appears in Finder. Because if that works, then Terminal can be avoided completely.

hi,
yes, i can mount / see disk.
i can see everything else but users/myusername folder is empty.
when i rightcklick users folder, and click "show details",
i can see that folder size is 140gt, so it can't be empty.

 

[jarppi]

would it help if i upgrade 1.8 to mavericks?

 

[Weaselboy]

would it help if i upgrade 1.8 to mavericks?

No, Mavericks won't help.

Mount and unlock the disk in Disk Utility like I explained, then open Finder and do shift-command-g then enter /Volumes in the popup and hit return then tell me exactly what volumes and volume names you see.

Meanwhile, I will work today on figuring out a Terminal command to get into that home folder on the drive and copy out some files. What specific folders do you need? Just Documents?

The issue is you can't see the data in those folders because you are not logged in to the account. We can work around that with Terminal commands. Normally, that would be fairly easy if it was another account on the same disk and you are logged in, but having this on another external disk makes it a different ball game.

Is your user account name on the current Mountain Lion disk the same name as the one you want to access on the Mavericks disk?

Get back to me with those answers and we will try and walk through this.

 

[jarppi]

No, Mavericks won't help.

Mount and unlock the disk in Disk Utility like I explained, then open Finder and do shift-command-g then enter /Volumes in the popup and hit return then tell me exactly what volumes and volume names you see.

Meanwhile, I will work today on figuring out a Terminal command to get into that home folder on the drive and copy out some files. What specific folders do you need? Just Documents?

The issue is you can't see the data in those folders because you are not logged in to the account. We can work around that with Terminal commands. Normally, that would be fairly easy if it was another account on the same disk and you are logged in, but having this on another external disk makes it a different ball game.

Is your user account name on the current Mountain Lion disk the same name as the one you want to access on the Mavericks disk?

Get back to me with those answers and we will try and walk through this.

Hi,
thank you for your help!!

tell me exactly what volumes and volume names you see.

First is "Hitachi" (Macericks HD)
Second is "WD-Blue" (10.8.5)

What specific folders do you need? Just Documents?

Desktop & Library.

Is your user account name on the current Mountain Lion disk the same name as the one you want to access on the Mavericks disk?

Yes, Username is same, but the password is different.


Thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi,
thank you for your help!!

First is "Hitachi" (Macericks HD)
Second is "WD-Blue" (10.8.5)

Desktop & Library.

Yes, Username is same, but the password is different.

I assume from your description then the Mavs system is on Mavericks HD (I'm guessing Macericks is a typo), and the new system is on a volume labelled 10.8.5. Those are the volume names I have used in the commands.

Okay. Attach the drive and unlock in Disk Util like you did earlier.

Then copy/paste this command into Terminal and change username in both spots to your actual username. Once that is done hit return and you will be prompted for a password. Put in the user password for the old system.

This one will copy everything on the Desktop of the old system to a folder called Temp on your new system.

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Mavericks\ HD/Users/username/Desktop /Volumes/10.8.5/Users/username/Desktop/Temp/

Repeat with this command (changing to your real username again) to move the contents of the old user Library to a folder on the new Desktop called Temp2.

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Mavericks\ HD/Users/username/Library /Volumes/10.8.5/Users/username/Desktop/Temp2/

I know this will work on a local volume with that sudo command, but I am unsure if it will work on that external volume., so let me know how it goes.

Edit: It has been a couple days, and I was thinking Mavs was the new system. I just edited the command to reflect Mavs is old and 10.8.5 is the new system (destination).

 

[chown33]

If what I suggested works, it just unlocks the drive and mounts the Macintosh HD core storage volume, but it does not login to the user account on the 10.9 disk. How do you propose copying files from the user account under 10.9 in Finder if not logged in to the account?

I'm not being sarcastic. Serious question.

I was under the impression that FileVault2 is full-disk encryption. Once the encryption is decoded, i.e. the disk is mounted, then access requires no other decryption. It's quite possible I am mistaken in this, since I haven't worked with FileVault2 disks yet. I apologize if I made an error.

Once the disk is mounted, it can be remounted with ownership disabled, which would grant whoever mounted it permission to the entire disk. Having written that out, I realize that would take a command-line (the 'mount' cmd with -o noowners option), so I guess I wasn't thinking it through.

 

[Weaselboy]

I was under the impression that FileVault2 is full-disk encryption. Once the encryption is decoded, i.e. the disk is mounted, then access requires no other decryption. It's quite possible I am mistaken in this, since I haven't worked with FileVault2 disks yet. I apologize if I made an error.

Once the disk is mounted, it can be remounted with ownership disabled, which would grant whoever mounted it permission to the entire disk. Having written that out, I realize that would take a command-line (the 'mount' cmd with -o noowners option), so I guess I wasn't thinking it through.

No apology necessary. I was hoping you had a better way to work around this that I missed.

FV2 is full disk encryption, and mounting in Disk Util like I suggested then "unlocking" does not so much decrypt as it unlocks or allows the encrypted volume to be read. Once "unlocked" it operates like any other volume. The problem here is you can see the unlocked FV2 system in Finder, but that does not get around the user permissions to access files.

You can also use the Terminal command "diskutil" to unlock the FV2 core storage volume, but that mounts it in the process. So I don't know how we could wiggle the mount -o command in there that seems like it would make this easier.

I'm hoping the sudo ditto with the admin PW from the target machine will do the trick.

I am certainly open to suggestions here to help a user out.

Edit: As I think about this, you can mount the disk in Disk Utility then unencrypt (Turn off encryption... menu choice), then would your suggested mount -o command work with no user permissions and allow Finder operations inside the user space?

 

[chown33]

You can also use the Terminal command "diskutil" to unlock the FV2 core storage volume, but that mounts it in the process. So I don't know how we could wiggle the mount -o command in there that seems like it would make this easier.

The mount command has an update option, but after playing around with various things, I can't get it to work here. I'm certain I've done this before, but it's been so long ago I don't recall the exact command I used.

The man page is here:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/mount.8.html
You may find something that works.


However, I noticed that a USB flash drive automatically connects with noowners already enabled (OS 10.8.4). Maybe a USB spinning-disk drive does the same.

This can be ascertained by issuing this cmd in Terminal:

mount

then looking for noowners in the list of attributes for the disk in question. The attributes are enclosed in parens, the last thing on the line.

 

[jarppi]

This one will copy everything on the Desktop of the old system to a folder called Temp on your new system.

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Mavericks\ HD/Users/username/Desktop /Volumes/10.8.5/Users/username/Desktop/Temp/

Thank you again.

it asked a password,
First i tried to put "mavericks" -installation password.
it said: "Sorry, try again."

Then i put 10.8 password, it worked.
until:
it said: "ditto: can't get real path for source"

Last login: Sat Jan  4 17:40:16 on console
macintosh-3:~ [I][B]username[/B][/I]$ sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Hitachi\ HD/Users/[I][B]username[/B][/I]/Desktop /Volumes/WD-Blue/Users/[I][B]username[/B][/I]/Desktop/Temp/
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
ditto: can't get real path for source
macintosh-3:~ [I][B]username[/B][/I]$

 

[Weaselboy]

Thank you again.

it asked a password,
First i tried to put "mavericks" -installation password.
it said: "Sorry, try again."

Then i put 10.8 password, it worked.
until:
it said: "ditto: can't get real path for source"

Last login: Sat Jan  4 17:40:16 on console
macintosh-3:~ [I][B]username[/B][/I]$ sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Hitachi\ HD/Users/[I][B]username[/B][/I]/Desktop /Volumes/WD-Blue/Users/[I][B]username[/B][/I]/Desktop/Temp/
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
ditto: can't get real path for source
macintosh-3:~ [I][B]username[/B][/I]$

You changed the wrong part of my commands. Leave the Mavericks HD and 10.8.5 parts like I had them. You need to change where I have username to your real username and it should work.

Is macintosh-3 the username on both systems?

If it is this should work:

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Mavericks\ HD/Users/macintosh-3/Desktop /Volumes/10.8.5/Users/macintosh-3/Desktop/Temp/

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Mavericks\ HD/Users/macintosh-3/Library /Volumes/10.8.5/Users/macintosh-3/Desktop/Temp2/

 

[jarppi]

I apologize for my unclear communication.

Names of hard disks are:
First is "Hitachi" -here is Macericks installation
Second is "WD-Blue" -here is 10.8.5 installation.



username -> was replaced with my own username, which is also the (user) home folder name (right?).

Last login: Sat Jan  4 17:40:16 on console
macintosh-3:~ [B][U]username[/U][/B]$ sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Hitachi\ HD/Users/[B][U]username[/U][/B]/Desktop /Volumes/WD-Blue/Users/[B][U]username[/U][/B]/Desktop/Temp/
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
ditto: can't get real path for source
macintosh-3:~ [B][U]username[/U][/B]$

If my name is John Doe, my home folder name is johndoe, right?

Last login: Sat Jan  4 17:40:16 on console
macintosh-3:~ [B][U]johndoe[/U][/B]$ sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Hitachi\ HD/Users/[B][U]johndoe[/U][/B]/Desktop /Volumes/WD-Blue/Users/[B][U]johndoe[/U][/B]/Desktop/Temp/
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
ditto: can't get real path for source
macintosh-3:~ [B][U]johndoe[/U][/B]$

 

[Weaselboy]

I am really confused. I think you are mixing hard drive brands with volume names.

Normally in Disk Utility it would look like my screenshot below. At the top is the brand name of the drive (a 74GB Hitachi in the example) and below that is a partition/volume called Macintosh HD. That Macintosh HD volume is where the data is and that would normally be what we would use in the ditto command.

It would be /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/.... etc....

So are you saying if you look in Disk Utility on the Mouintain Lion system there is a drive band name listed at the top then below that instead of a Macintosh HD volume you have one called WD-Blue? So at some point you renamed Macintosh HD to WD-Blue??

Same thing on the Mavericks side? You at some point renamed the Macintosh HD partition to Hitachi?

If that is what you have done, you have the correct command in your last post, with one error. If the Mavericks install is on a volume called Hitachi and not "Hitachi HD", you don't need the \ HD part in there. That section would just be /Volumes/Hitachi/Users/username.

It looks like you have the username part worked out. You username is what is shown before that $ in Terminal.

If this does not work, mount and unlock the Mavs system and show me a screenshot of what you get by a shift-command-g then entering /Volumes in Finder.

 

[jarppi]

thank you for your patience

Drives:
http://imgur.com/GetcbO9

sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Hitachi/Users/[B]username[/B]/Desktop /Volumes/WD-Blue/Users/[B]username[/B]/Desktop/Temp/

Terminal:
http://imgur.com/mtRejrG

Code:
http://imgur.com/5UpzEow

 

[jarppi]

Now I tried to copy the entire home folder

Now I tried to copy the entire home folder:
With success, but i don't have permission to open it

Code:

Folder:

 

[Weaselboy]

Now I tried to copy the entire home folder:
With success, but i don't have permission to open it

Ah.... good. Did it take some time to copy like it was actually moving files?

Run the command below in Terminal and that should give you permission to open the folder. Swap username for your real username.

sudo chown username -R ~/Desktop/Temp2/

 

[jarppi]

Ah.... good. Did it take some time to copy like it was actually moving files?

in fact, no

Run the command below in Terminal and that should give you permission to open the folder. Swap username for your real username.

sudo chown username -R ~/Desktop/Temp2/

 

[Weaselboy]

in fact, no

Hmm... well that's not very encouraging is it.

How about just unencrypt the Mavs drive in Disk Utility. Just select Turn off encryption in that same menu you did the unlock. Once that is done you should be able to boot from it normally then copy files off.