Archive and Install with and with out user Prefs
 

Archive and Install with and with out user Prefs:

These installation Options which became available with 10.2/Jaguar and later allow one to install a new System with out first reformatting their Drive (Having Backups is still Sage Advice)

Both Options Create a new System folder and a Previous one out of your existing.

With** user Prefs Installer trys to exactly recreate the current environment with very few exceptions (that I am aware of Palm Conduits, NAV9, Custom Mouse Drivers and CCC off the top of my head are the only casualties).

With OUT** User prefs is a TRUE clean install with out** having to reformat. You will have drag Apps from Previous Apps to New Apps folder, Old Desktop items to new etc, Some Apps will require reinstalling. ,Recreate Printers etc.

In Both versions Systems Patches need to be reinstalled etc.
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Yes some of us may be able to help you unscramble the Egg (As you are aware there is a bug in Font Book that allows one to wipe your fonts). Wether your suppostion is correct that they only end up in the trash to be put back in the correct place I am unsure of.

Helvetica can not be the only Font the system needs to function.

You will need to do WITH OUT user Prefs as you do not want to recreate teh current problems.

I'm sure I saw a way on these forums to construct a new user account from the Terminal. If I can find it, I'll post a link to it.

There was an article on the main macosxhints site:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...30603190314390

okay... At this point I don't know how a new user account will help me if I don't know what files (or lack of files) are to blame. Not to mention that dbhill already noted that switching to the root user didn't work.

Last time I did a fresh install I was smart enough to create a separate partition for OS9 (about 6gigs available on it), so I can back up some of my stuff. However, I have a number of files that I have set the ownership to www and the group to admin, but when I copy them the ownership changes to zeb. How can I copy these files without losing the ownership and permissions?

I searched and searched, but could not find it.

However, what if you downloaded TinkerTool and used it to change the Application font for your system.

Tinkertool claims that the follow fonts (at various sizes) for
System: LucidaGrande
System(headlines): LucidaGrand-Bold
Application: Helvetica
Fixed-pitch: Monaco
Messages: LucidaGrande
Labels: LucidaGrande
Help-Tags: LucidaGrande
Window Title Bars: LucidaGrande
Utility Title Bars: LucidaGrande

So perhaps if you used TinkerTool to change the Application font to anything besides Helvetica, then you could open Accounts long enough to create a new user.

As an alternative, perhaps one could create a new user using Netinfo Manager...except that one could probably not open Netinfo Manager either.

NetInfo Manager does work, but I was unable to enable the root user... if that says anyhting...

I will try TinkerTool. I have that sitting around in my Apps folder...

Standby...

no dice... :mad: beachball

The one I thought might work didn't and the one I thought would not work did (although not well enough to help).

You could try to use hayne's link to create the new user account, and then migrate all of the personal files in your current user account over to the new user account. Once you're sure you've moved everything, then delete the old user account. I'm thinking that if you used the Terminal to move those particular files over, then their ownership and permissions would be preserved [someone else might chime in here to prove me wrong if I am wrong]. Before you move those over, you should change the ownership on all your other files to newuser:admin or whatever to agree with the new account.

** slaps forehead **

I emptied the /Library/Caches folder and everything works now. :) I think the problem was in the /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/501 folder.

Th only weird thing is that the fonts menu is quite smaller than I remember it being. I'll have to proceed with great caution now... maybe I'll manually add fonts to the ~/Library/Fonts folder...

I like the idea of an Apple font management utility, but I think I'll let it evolve a bit before I start depending on it!

As far as how to copy files while preserving the ownerships... does anyone have any ideas? I remember hearing about this a while back. I think it had to do with creating a backup with a third party utility...

ditto will try to preserve file ownership and permissions

Thanks.

For basic system set up
 

Please note for Future that for a basic system set up, separte partitions are no longer necessary. That whole System X, Apps, and OS9 Parition thing is no longer needed thanx to Archive and install in X and clean install in 9.

This not to say that for other uses e.g. Cloning that partitions are not useful.

Glad your problems resolved...

Thanks for the info, it's good to know. I did it more for organizational reasons, and to have a method of backing up if I needed to.

I'm not sure if it's Panther or separating the two systems, but since I did it, my computer runs much faster. Especially during startup/log-in. It would often take more than three minutes to startup in Jaguar, and 45sec.-1min. to log-in. Meanwhile, OS9 outperformed Jaguar in almost all file system actions.

It is Panther that is giving you the speed boost
 

It is Panther that is giving you the speed boost:)

Though Reformating your drive is the brute force way to repair disk damage and this too would make your system start up faster if you had any.

Panther is faster in many other ways.

Re: It is Panther that is giving you the speed boost
 

Yes, and it was long overdue. Too much playing around like a kid in the candy store when I first switched to OSX a year ago... Remnants of trial and error. ;)

I also noticed that these prefs files change when I enable/disable a font.So removing them may also help. Glad to hear the cache thing got you going again though....