How to "bless" user directories copied to new iMac?

Question

The old "source" iMac wouldn't boot Target Disk Mode, so I put the new Intel iMac in Target Disk Mode, then used SuperDuper to copy the user directories from the old iMac G5 to the new Intel iMac.
How do I correctly set up the NetInfo Manager records for the ported user directories?
Many thanks, Steve

Answer 1

It may depend on the history of the accounts on that machine, but as of 10.4, if you create a new account the simple way (using "System Preferences" > "Accounts") and a folder exists in "/Users" with the same short name, an option will often be presented allowing that folder to be "adopted" by the new account
Some notes:
The process involves a 'chown -R username:username' equivalent, and the 'uid' of the folder contents will be changed to that of the new user (whose 'uid' will simply be the next available number), as opposed to the user's 'uid' being matched to the folder. So if you have some sort of complicated user:group setup for items within the user's folder, or are trying to maintain consistent 'uid' values for users across multiple machines for NFS or whatever, don't use this method.
Also, if a group already exists with the selected short name, you will not be allowed to create the account, with the message along the lines that the name isn't available.
A couple of the things you mentioned reflect how users were configured in 10.2 and earlier. There have been a few changes to the contents of user records in "NetInfo" since then so I think it would be better to let the system create the accounts rather than doing it yourself - unless there are reasons not to, like the ones mentioned above...