I want to migrate just a very few apps (including MsOffice 2008) from Sierra running on its own machine to High Sierra running in a VirtualBox VM on Catalina. There are a huge number of apps in /Applications on Sierra. Migrate (over wifi) will take a very long time and transport many apps I don't need moved. I can't get the USB working with the VM so it has to be over wifi. So my plan is this ... will it work??
On the source machine:
sudo su
mkdir /tmpApplications
copy the wanted apps to /tmpApplications
mv /Applications /keepApplications; mv /tmpApplications /Applications; /keepApplications/Utilities/Migration_Assistant.app
Then after doing the migration
sudo su
rm -fr /Applications; mv /keepApplications /Applications
Questions are a) will it fall over when I rename /Applications b) will migrate work with many apps no longer in /Applications c) will it behave decently after the migration until I did the rename again.
Of course I can always repair it by booting from a USB device and modifiying / directly if it goes wrong.
Any thoughts on whether it will work ?
There are a great many "how can I migrate one app" questions out there and no satisfactory answer - this may be a good answer to it.
Another trick might be to mv all the unwanted apps to bin, do the migrate then restore them - but that feels too dangerous, too many possibilities for something to go wrong.
andy
On the source machine:
sudo su
mkdir /tmpApplications
copy the wanted apps to /tmpApplications
mv /Applications /keepApplications; mv /tmpApplications /Applications; /keepApplications/Utilities/Migration_Assistant.app
Then after doing the migration
sudo su
rm -fr /Applications; mv /keepApplications /Applications
Questions are a) will it fall over when I rename /Applications b) will migrate work with many apps no longer in /Applications c) will it behave decently after the migration until I did the rename again.
Of course I can always repair it by booting from a USB device and modifiying / directly if it goes wrong.
Any thoughts on whether it will work ?
There are a great many "how can I migrate one app" questions out there and no satisfactory answer - this may be a good answer to it.
Another trick might be to mv all the unwanted apps to bin, do the migrate then restore them - but that feels too dangerous, too many possibilities for something to go wrong.
andy