Restore Library from TM backup, manually, after clean install

Question

Because of numerous issues with my Yosemite upgrade, I decided to start the new year with a clean install. I ran Time Machine one last time, then proceeded with the clean install of Yosemite 10.10.1. I discovered, subsequently, that,when I ran Time Machine, the timeline showed each backup event but, when I clicked (any) one event, the Finder window showed only the sidebar and nothing else (except for Now on the timeline). I ran verify, which completed without any error messages.
After some researching, here, I discovered that if I went into the TM sparsebundle, I could manually copy the missing folders (data) to my clean install; i.e., I could copy all but the Library folder for which I received the error message:
     “Library” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by OS X.
I’m sure there’s a way using the Terminal app to perform the copy, but have no clue how to do it, safely.
Would someone please provide the lines I need to enter into the Terminal to perform the task?
Here’s the path info:
     From:
        file:///Volumes/Time%20Machine%20Backups/Backups.backupdb/MBA2015/2014-12-31-004210/Macintosh%20HD/Users/tom/library/
    To:
        /Users/Tom/Library/
Thanks.

Answer 1

You can't modify the Library folder for the currently logged in user. Also you don't want to do the copy from the TimeMachine folders - those files have special permissions and ACL attributes that the real Library doesn't need and will likely cause problems.
What I would do if I were you would be to restore the Library folder to a temporary location, then logout and with another admin type user (create another if you don't already have a spare admin user) and then use this (assume xxx is first user with problematic Library and yyy is second admin type user and that the temporary Library restore folder is located in ~/xxx/templibraryfolder)
     cd ~/xxx
     sudo mv Library Library-xxx
     sudo ditto templibraryfolder ~/xxx/Library
sudo will prompt for password
then logout of yyy account/user and login as original xxx account/user
or even better would be to use Time Machine to restore the ~/xxx/Library folder while logged in as the yyy user (after renaming the ~/xxx/Library folder to ~/xxx/Library-xxx
Then logout from yyy and login as xxx and if everything looks ok, remove the ~/Library-xxx folder as they can be quite large (will need to do
     sudo rm -rf ~/xxx/Library
Don't do the above until you know things are working fine - so wait a while till you use all apps (or a lot of them especially licensed software like Adobe or other difficult to install apps)
~ is just a shortcut for the current users home folder -- e.g. if you logged in as Tom it would be /Users/Tom
Is that clear?? - don't proceed if you have any questions -- you're about to make a change that if not done correctly will cause lots of problems, so type carefully and have fun...and pat yourself on the back for making backups!!