Home Forums Mac Software Mac Operating Systems New computer & migrating to same

I'm the proud new owner of a 27" iMac, 3.4 GHz Quad Core i7 with 4 GB of memory, system 10.6.7. I'm upgrading and trying to migrate from my 10 year old G4 PPC running 10.4.11. Running Migration assistant on the iMac I clicked the radio button for "From another Mac", then on the next screen clicked the "Use Network" button.
The next screen starts "On your other Mac, do the following:
• Open Software Update to make sure your computer has the latest version of Mac OS X installed." Obviously if I'm running 10.4.11, it's not the latest version, but there were 3 updates that I downloaded and installed.
"• Open Migration Assistant and select "To another Mac" on the Select Migration Method" pane." There is no such choice.

Is migration not available from 10.4.11 to 10.6.7 over the network, or at all?

Also, the iMac is looking for other computers and doesn't appear to find any on the network yet "acer(c)" and "admin" show up on my iMac desktop. The admin appearing when I click on G4 in the servers window.

Can I buy a firewire cable and use target disk mode with migration assistant?

Any other options?
=====================

Next question: Is there a way to find out if the current versions of software I'm running on 10.4.11 will run on 10.6.7?

Thanks!

The fastest and easiest way to migrate your data is connecting your machines back to back with a firewire cable then booting the old Mac into Firewire target disk mode. Launch Migration Assistant on the new machine and select the option to migrate from another drive (your old Mac will appear as a drive mounted on the new iMac.)

Note 1: If you have already setup a user account on the iMac with the same user name as the on your G4, you will have to copy the user data on the G4 to a new account. If you have not setup an account on the iMac or you used a different userid then the account will be copied from the G4 to the iMac using the same account name and password as you had on the G4.

Note 2: Many of your OSX 10.4 applications will not be compatible with OS X 10.6.7 on the iMac and some 10.4.x utilities can actually damage the file system on the iMac, so you may want to consider carefully before migrating your applications. Your data files on the other hand should be fine but Mail, iPhoto, iTunes and perhaps some other newer apps will have to convert their data base from the version used in 10.4.x.

In addition to joemikeb's advice, you will run into a problem with a firewire cable. The PPC Mac has firewire 400 but the iMac has firewire 800. The connectors are different. You will either need a FW 400 - 800 cable or, if you have a FW 400 cable, a FW 400 - 800 adapter (essentially a very short 400 -800 cable). Both are available from Apple. I used such an adapter to migrate for a friend (via target disk mode) under similar circumstances and it worked perfectly.

One more thing: Migration Assistant will give you an estimate of the time that the migration will take. Don't believe it. Go away and have a cup of coffee or three.

When I migrated from my G4 DP 450 to my Mac Pro, the estimated time stuck at 5 minutes for about half an hour. Then, it finished. Total time was about 90 minutes in reality. (OS 10.4 to 10.4)

For my friend, the migration went from an older iMac to a newer one. Total time was about 40 minutes. (OS 10.4 to 10.6)

In some migrations, Mail accounts, mailboxes, and settings are migrated, but the messages themselves are not migrated until you launch Mail on the new computer and confirm that you want them migrated.

When the migration is complete, launch the Console application, located in /Applications/Utilities. Use the disclosure triangle to show Files-->/Library/Logs/SystemMigration.log. Check that log for any errors by putting the word "error" (without the quotation marks) into the Filter field at the top right corner of the Console window. Many of the reported errors are without apparent consequence, but any report that a file could not be found or copied should be investigated.

You may care to use a bit of caution if you are using DiskWarrior. Just ensure you are using current version.

Thanks Joemikeb & jchuzi, the firewire cable was the solution. Everything seems to have migrated, but when I try to run some of the software it says I need to install Rosetta. Haven't done that as yet. Mail and Safari seem to have migrated fine. The time wasn't exact, but not far off.

One of the programs I use heavily is Filemaker. There's a special deal out for 1/2 price if you buy Filemaker Go for the iPhone. I think I'll do that rather than try to run v8.5

The errors I found are:

2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group lp has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group postfix has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group postdrop has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group uucp has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group www has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group mysql has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group sshd has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group qtss has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group mailman has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group appserverusr has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group appserveradm has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group clamav has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group amavisd has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group jabber has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group xgridcontroller has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group xgridagent has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group appowner has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group windowserver has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group tokend has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group securityagent has failed.
2011-05-12 11:33:43 -0500 *X* Error : Creating group unknown has failed.
2011-05-12 12:02:44 -0500 ERROR: Tool returned 1
2011-05-12 12:02:45 -0500 ERROR: Tool returned 1
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Networks
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:02:47 -0500 Error creating entry "<use --verbose for full description>" in dsRecTypeStandard:Aliases
2011-05-12 12:03:13 -0500 ERROR: Tool returned 1
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/Message and Cancel.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/Message and OK.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/Message and Return.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/Message if not Cancel.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/No Message.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:14 -0500 ConfMig. Skip /Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Error Handlers/Write Error to Log.scpt
2011-05-12 12:03:18 -0500 ERROR: Tool returned 1

I have v4.1.1, looks like 4.4.3 is the current one. I'll have to upgrade, Thanks for the heads up.

Those errors can be ignored. Essentially, every Mac is actually a multiuser Unix workstation. There are a number of users and groups that don't actually belong to human beings who use the computer; instead, they belong to processes that OS X uses internally.

For example, "windowserver" is the part of OS X that draws windows and icons and such on the screen. "Tokend" is the part of OS X responsible for handling hardware security tokens--those little gizmos that you can plug into your computer for accessing certain kinds of high security networks (I understand some banks are using them these days). XGrid is Apple's networking software for building distributed supercomputers out of Macs. And so on.

These are "users" on your computer. For various reasons, many of which relate to security, these programs "log on" to your computer as special users or run in special groups when they run. Migration Assistant will move users and groups over from an old computer to a new computer if you have multiple users or groups, but it won't move those ones because they are already part of the operating system.

The files that were skipped are files that are part of AppleScript. I believe they are skipped because newer versions are already on your new Mac.

Thanks tacit.