All applications fail to launch after cloning to a new HD

[rnorphling]

Let me explain my current situation.

I have a 640G HD with 2 partitions. First partition is 200G, this is my boot partition. Second one is 440G, it is for storing Movies, Mp3, and stuffs that I dun really need to backup.

Yesterday, I downloaded Superduper! (Unregistered version) and tried to clone my first partition to a 150G HD. Yes this HD is for testing the functionality of superduper to check whether the destination drive is actually bootable. The capacity of my source drive is 200G but I have only used around 50G, so I dont think cloning this partition to a 150G HD will result in any problem and I expect around 100G is still free in my destination drive. So I start cloning and it finished without any problem. I restart my hackintosh and choose the new drive as my first boot. It stopped. I realise that I forget to install the EFI thing onto it so I back to my old partition and install Chameleon before the next restart. YAY! This time it boots. I landed on my new cloned drive and start testing everything around. I clicked on Firefox, it prompts sth like "The application Firefox quit unexpectedly". It fails to launch. Then I wanna check what happen so I click system preference, it prompts "The application system preference quit unexpectedly". It fails to launch too! ! Afterwards, I click on many other programs and get the same result. I am doomed! I have no idea how it would be like this and definitely dont know how to solve it! Any clues?

 

edit - Thing goes weird! This time I try to use -v -f -x in the boot menu and entered single user mode. Everything is working again! But once I boot normally without any flags, all apps are fail to launch. Solution is needed!!!!!

[MacNutty]

Have to repaired the disk permissions?

[mschilling]

Ya, or try a new account. When I used the migration assistant to clone my system, it wanted me to open a new account with a different name, dunno why.

[rnorphling]

Have to repaired the disk permissions?

 

But I even cant kick off the Disk Utility app. I am not sure whether I can get into my Terminal, but is there any method for me to do the disk permission thing in such situation?

 

BTW, I found that there is an option in SuperDuper called "Repair Permission" in the Before Copy section. Do I need to check this box before cloning my HD? I am sure I didn't check this box for the above case. I should give it a try when I back home tonight.

[mschilling]

You can try booting in single user and repair d p from there.

[hecker]

You need to make sure that the correct ownerships are set to your cloned user's home directory.

Try this in the terminal:

sudo chown -R your_username:staff /Users/your_username

That should do it.

 

Cheers,

 

- hecker

 

EDIT: You can also do this in singe user mode (boot with -s), or creating a new administrator account and executing the terminal command from within the account.

[rnorphling]

1) I tried to check the repair permission box before another cloning, FAIL

2) After the clone, I login single user mode with -x, repair d p, back to normal mode, and FAIL

3) First, I follow your -s and enter a unix-like command line environment and I found that I was root there. I go to /Users and type ls -l , I found that my home is owned by 501:staff but not Eric:staff

I try to use your command to fix my ownership but fail, it prompts "invalid argument Eric" or sth like that. I back to -x and create a new acc Eric2 and login with it. I open a terminal, found that Eric home is correctly owned by Eric but not 501 this time. May be I made sth wrong but the result is FAIL too. Of coz the newly created acc Eric2 is well functioning but not Eric.

 

Should I give it up? Anyone successfully cloned their HD with Superduper! before? Can you share some valuable experience? Thanks in advance!!

[hecker]

1) I tried to check the repair permission box before another cloning, FAIL

2) After the clone, I login single user mode with -x, repair d p, back to normal mode, and FAIL

3) First, I follow your -s and enter a unix-like command line environment and I found that I was root there. I go to /Users and type ls -l , I found that my home is owned by 501:staff but not Eric:staff

I try to use your command to fix my ownership but fail, it prompts "invalid argument Eric" or sth like that. I back to -x and create a new acc Eric2 and login with it. I open a terminal, found that Eric home is correctly owned by Eric but not 501 this time. May be I made sth wrong but the result is FAIL too. Of coz the newly created acc Eric2 is well functioning but not Eric.

 

Should I give it up? Anyone successfully cloned their HD with Superduper! before? Can you share some valuable experience? Thanks in advance!!

Look, if you can't execute the command I gave you because of an invalid argument, shouldn't you try to find out what the correct argument is instead of just giving up and looking for alternate solutions?

I guess the problem is that you are entering a wrong user account name. Remember that user names are CASE SENSITIVE. Users have both a full name and a short name (ie. long ="Eric Miller" and short="eric"). Find out what your real short name is (I'm guessing eric).

 

Another alternative would be to first copy the full contents of your "broken" users home directory to a different location (I assume that the source folder is called "eric". Fix accordingly), with:

sudo cp -R /Users/eric /user_backup_dir/

Make sure your target folder exists before executing the command (like ie. mkdir /user_backup_dir).

Then erase and re-create your current "Eric" account from scratch. Then do the following:

1.- remove the newly create user's home folder.

sudo rm -R /Users/eric (if eric is the short name)

2.- re-create the user's home directory

sudo cp -R /user_backup_dir/eric /Users/

3.- fix the owner

sudo chown -R eric:staff /Users/eric

 

EDIT: Booting with -s will probably show the user's ID as the owner of files. So Eric (or eric) is probably ID=501. There is nothing wrong with that. Superduper has always worked well here.

[rnorphling]

Thanks for your patience reply!

 

OK, I found that the reason why I received the msg "Invalid argument" for Eric/eric, is that I cant even find the record in /etc/passwd . When I grep Eric/eric in /etc/passwd it returns nothing. I am not sure whether this is equals to "User Eric is not existed" becoz I am a real novice in mac. Definitely something is weird here becoz I can login with Eric during normal boot and with -x. BTW one thing seems to be strange is that when I use -s, I finally login the command line environment being a root there! I used whoami to check and yes, I am root but not Eric. Any thoughts?

[mitch_de]

I have near same problem (My Thread is here , no repelys

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=140150 )

I am experienced (using 2 years at leat 3 HDs with MBR) but didnt get an GUID partitioned Clone working.

It was my first try to use GUID.

Booting : No problems !

Apps: all crashed !

 

So i repartitioned to MBR - voila - all worked.

 

I am 100% sure that is wasnt an problem of the owners/rights. (wouldnt boot without problems!)

Must be something with GUID.

Whats so ??? is that booting and all Menü Items(Monitor, Audio) worked, but all App crashed.

[rnorphling]

by visiting the official forum, the author of SuperDuper! provide a script here for adding to "After Copy" in advanced tab

for me as i am not going to reclone the disk again, i simply type

sudo update_prebinding -root /Volume/[partition name] -force

enter root password and reboot.....

 

VOILA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT FINALLY ENTER THE PARTITION AND SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH ALL APPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!