Well, taking matters into my own hands, all I can conclude is that you can really screw up an OS.
I did a complete install from the DVD and then an update of OSX server 10.4.8 on a firewire disc, this runs fine, but of course it does not contain any of the config files from our previous installation.
I then booted from a disinterested standard OSX drive and I dared to copy files from the previous (but slightly corrupted) boot disc into this new disc to see if we could get some of our old services and settngs back up:
I went into
/private/etc
and into
/private/var
and copied .conf files and many other likely candidates over. I was overzealous but since I really don’t know what I’m doing anyway I figured what the hell.
The result was not successful, there was no longer any valid login on the new new disc so I screwed up the installation and will have to start from scratch again. So if anyone has attempted to do this sort of thing before and has a list of what files NOT to copy over I’m all ears!
The permutations are endless… so many dangerous files to either leave alone or copy over. Is this a fruitless exercise?
Best wishes,
Bob
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