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I have installed Snow Leopard in a separate partition in my machine. After verifying the installation was good, I went ahead to use Migration Assistant to restore my profiles and applications from the original 10.5.6 partition. It took me like 50 minutes and I was able to get back to my desktop after a reboot.

After the amazement of such a successful restore (comparing to the mediocre windows backup), I proceed to do a time machine backup. During that time I try to browse the previous versions of my files, but many of them are un-openable due to permission.

I am using the restored account right now but I still can't open those files. How can I take the ownership/set the permission of the previous versions of my files?

deddebme
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4 Answers4

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I did as Lena suggested but found that it was enough to only drag the relevant folder(s) out of TM and onto my new computer's desktop. Once there, it had all the data (files, folders, etc) originally inside it and all of them without permission restrictions. I.e., I didn't have to then place the folder from the desktop into the Trash and then back out.

To recap, I lost the ability (permission) to use my TM backup because Migration Assistant locked it up. My new Mac's (Admin) User profile is named different from the User profile I had in the old Mac (and hence the one in TM).

Brian
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Highlight the folder in question, file --> Get Info --> Sharing & Permissions --> Unlock --> Set permissions to give you ownership --> Click on Gear, select Apply to Enclosed items.

Sorry, misread the question.... It's a permissions issue, but what your really asking is how to merge two different Time Machine Backup stores.

You really can't merge them... Time Machine considers each install to be a different machine, which is why your running into an issue. For example, your first install isn't snow leopard... So why would you want your Snow Leopard OS files to be equated with your non-Snow Leopard files...? At least that's part of the reason that Apple has designed it this way...

I think I know what has happened, but I'm not sure the best way to resolve it.

You originally had a single partition, which contained leopard, and your user account? You then shrunk the Leopard partition, and made a second partition for Snow Leopard? Installed Snow leopard, and then restored from backup with the target being Snow Leopard's partition?

Did you do a User Migration with restore? Or a Snow Leopard install with Time Machine restore? I suspect a SL Install w/restore...

I suspect that the user account in Leopard is a different user ID than your SL user account (eg 501 vs 503). Can you check? System Preferences --> Accounts -> Right Click on Account --> Advanced -> What is the User ID on Snow Leopard? And on Leopard?

That would explain your permissions issue. If you haven't done much in Snow Leopard, I would suggest creating a temporary Admin account, deleting your current user, and then using the User Migration tool to bring your old user account over from the Leopard partition... Seamless, and should do exactly what you want...

I know you can do it manually, but since your user account already exists, I don't know what impact it would have in manually correcting the user id, etc, in Snow Leopard...

Benjamin Schollnick
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I just had this problem when I transferred my files to a new computer via Time Machine. I came across a solution quite by accident. I moved the folder that was unopenable onto my desktop. Then I put it in the trash. Then I took it out of the trash and it opened just fine. It may be worth a try. I realize this is a few years too late, but if I had this problem then others will too, and this worked for me.

Lena
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Benjamin is on the right track in that Time Machine recognizes that you have a new computer, but user IDs do not enter into this.

Time Machine is tied to a particular computer, so Apple intends for you to wipe the backup and start with a fresh backup. You can get around this and link your old backup with the new computer by following the directions at this link:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101

You can also try manually browsing the Time Machine folder and copying out the files you need that way. I'm not sure if that will work or not without the modifications from the above link. but copying them from the command line with sudo should certainly work.

ridogi
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