Migrated users incorrectly, now permissions problems

Question

Hi all!
I purchased a 2011 MBP this year, to replace my 2008 MBP. I attempted to use Migration Assistant, but didn't transfer correctly and now I'm having permissions related problems. I'm assuming they are related, as that is how it sounds from posts I've read in these forums.
When I used migration assistant, I had already created the same user name on the new MBP. Now that I've read many posts in this forum, I realize I should never have created a user on the new MBP, prior to using migration assistant. Anyway, having trouble with duplicate account names, I believe I reformatted the drive and used the drag and drop method from the old MBP to the new (I can't honestly remember, but I'm pretty sure that's the method I chose). I still created the same user name on both, so perhaps that wasn't a great idea.
For the most part I didn't notice any problems, until after I purchased and installed MS Office 2011. I would open any Office app and everytime it would require me to go through all opening screens as if it was the first time opening Office, even though it had the serial number and all personal information already. I went through MS tech support and fortunately spoke with a very knowledgeable mac user and we traced it down to a permissions problem. He suggested I delete the user name and use the TestName we had created (which had no problems) At the time, I was in the middle of a large video project and I didn't want to do anything that may cause potential problems with it. I finished the project and began another one immediately. In the new project, I had problems with Premiere Pro not recognizing audio in some, not all, clips. I spent days with Adobe tech support and even sent them a sample file. Fast forward to yesterday; it was once again traced to permissions problems. The clip worked under the root user account we (Adobe tech support and I) created.
So, my question is what is the best way to proceed? It seems apparent that I have to delete a user or figure out how to repair all permissions at once, since I have found files and repaired a few with the one-at-a-time method. Obviously this is time consuming and I don't have that kind of time.
Should I delete the username and move things to a new username? If so, what are the best steps to prevent any permissions problems? Or is there a way to repair all file permissions through a command in the terminal?
I can't honestly say I never had any permission problems with the 2008 MBP before, so if by chance there were permisions problems, or any other user related problems, would they have been introduced to this new MBP?
Thank you in advance for the help! :-)
EM

Answer 1

emerson MEDIA wrote:
 About make a copy of /Users/paisleye into /Users/paislWhy am I doing that? Just for backup? Through the remainder of your post, it sounded as if I would only be accessing /Users/paisleye. Did I mis-read something?
Exactly -- just for backup.  You may notice I'm a little paranoid -- if you have a Time Machine backup, and a SuperDuper/CarbonCopyCloner bootable clone on an external disk, AND a copy in /Users/paisl -- then you've got 3 backups before you start.  :-)  And when you are done you will have the original of /Users/paisleye in /Users/paisl and the original of /Users/test will still be in /Users/test.
What should happen with the ordering is this:
-- if a file is in /Users/test but not in /Users/paisleye, then it will copy over into /Users/paisleye with it's current ownership and permissions, which seem to be right.
-- if a file is in /Users/paisleye but not in /Users/test, then the copy isn't going to fix anything, but it isn't going to hurt anything more, either.  The step where you set ownership of everything in /Users/paisleye to test:staff might just fix all of those problems.
-- if a file is in /Users/paisleye AND /Users/test, then if the ownership/permissions are right on one and wrong on the other it's probably /Users/test that's good.  The copy (the long complicated tar command) will copy the /Users/test version and it's permissions/ownership overtop the /Users/paisleye version.  If that's not right, there is a backup in /Users/paisl, and on the TimeMachine, and on the clone.
What's likely is that you are going to have the occasional weird thing happen with some stray file for months/years.  You can always go back and use chown and/or chmod on an individual file to fix it.  (The -R is the "recursive" flag to do a directory and everything underneath.  Leave it out, and it just does one file at a time.)
I actually ended up with three different accounts on my machine that belong to "me" and had to do this.  (I bought the machine with free Parallels installed, and MacMall created an account called "user" to install it and I had to clean that up when I got it.)  This is not a terrible thing.  One thing that I would recommend if you get it all done and cleaned up and you are happy -- keep the test account, and keep it as an Administrator; then turn off Administrator on the paisleye account.  Then every time you need to do something Administrator, just give the test username/password.  Every so often you will get software that will refuse to install from a non-priv'd account (looking at you adobe!) so just turn on Fast User Switching and log into the test account and install from there.  It just a lot safer if you are not logged in all of the time with privs...
And this unix stuff isn't hard to get the hang of.  If you half remember something, you can google it and find oodles of excellent documentation.