- Joined
- Aug 30, 2016
- Messages
- 186
- Motherboard
- Asus MAXIMUS XI HERO
- CPU
- i7-8700K
- Graphics
- RX5700 XT
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
Don't try this at home, kids.
As so often before, I got a bit too clever for my own good. Having got a bootable Catalina drive (yay! yay!) I thought it might be quick and simple to use CCC to copy all my installed non-Apple apps, open source software etc from my Mojave disk to my new Catalina disk. So... I started a CCC copy of just 3 folder trees: /Applications, /opt, /usr ... with the filter Don't update newer files on the destination.
What I thought would happen: all my installed applications, gnu utilities, brew, and tons of other stuff I've added to my machine would get installed in Catalina-land. I thought that any newer files (as in, any part of the Catalina install!) would be safe. I thought it would be simpler than trying to restore or Migrate from Time Machine backups. I think I was very wrong...
Because now, when I log in to Catalina, my desktop is broken boo hoo. There's no menu bar; no app will launch, including Finder (though it thinks it is running, it has no windows). Spotlight and the clock are visible at upper right, but Spotlight can't find any files (so I can't even launch a Terminal to start poking around). When I boot in single-user mode and look at system.log, there's just an endless stream of errors about failures to launch and postponing respawn by 10 seconds, that kind of stuff.
Sigh.
Well, I clearly wasn't at my brightest when I had that "good idea." If anyone recognises the "nothing will launch, no menu bar" symptom and there is a straightforward fix, I'd be very grateful for any useful info; but failing that, I think I'm installing Catalina again from scratch
... oh well, yet another (painful) learning experience!
CCC did warn me, actually, that installing files from the Mojave boot disk onto the Catalina boot disk might corrupt the Catalina installation. But I thought I had got enough safeguards in place (only selected directory trees, and don't replace newer files) that I could disregard that warning and proceed. As the Demotivators calendar says, perhaps the purpose of my life is to serve as a warning to others!
As so often before, I got a bit too clever for my own good. Having got a bootable Catalina drive (yay! yay!) I thought it might be quick and simple to use CCC to copy all my installed non-Apple apps, open source software etc from my Mojave disk to my new Catalina disk. So... I started a CCC copy of just 3 folder trees: /Applications, /opt, /usr ... with the filter Don't update newer files on the destination.
What I thought would happen: all my installed applications, gnu utilities, brew, and tons of other stuff I've added to my machine would get installed in Catalina-land. I thought that any newer files (as in, any part of the Catalina install!) would be safe. I thought it would be simpler than trying to restore or Migrate from Time Machine backups. I think I was very wrong...
Because now, when I log in to Catalina, my desktop is broken boo hoo. There's no menu bar; no app will launch, including Finder (though it thinks it is running, it has no windows). Spotlight and the clock are visible at upper right, but Spotlight can't find any files (so I can't even launch a Terminal to start poking around). When I boot in single-user mode and look at system.log, there's just an endless stream of errors about failures to launch and postponing respawn by 10 seconds, that kind of stuff.
Sigh.
Well, I clearly wasn't at my brightest when I had that "good idea." If anyone recognises the "nothing will launch, no menu bar" symptom and there is a straightforward fix, I'd be very grateful for any useful info; but failing that, I think I'm installing Catalina again from scratch
... oh well, yet another (painful) learning experience!CCC did warn me, actually, that installing files from the Mojave boot disk onto the Catalina boot disk might corrupt the Catalina installation. But I thought I had got enough safeguards in place (only selected directory trees, and don't replace newer files) that I could disregard that warning and proceed. As the Demotivators calendar says, perhaps the purpose of my life is to serve as a warning to others!