Newbie questions: saving settings and disk images

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J-Rod

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I've been working in OSX for about a week now and I have a few questions...

When I downloaded Firefox I noticed that there was an icon on my desktop that looked like a disk drive. I assume this is what is called a disk image?? From what I've read, I need to click on the disk image and drag the Firefox icon into my applications folder to install the program. After doing that, I can eject the disk image and toss it in the trash?? Thats it right? If not, can someone explain to me what the .dmg file is.

My next question pertains to saving any changes I made to my system. I spent a while changing my touchpad settings, downloading widgets, and personalizing the system. When I made a shut-down after installing new software, all the settings and such were lost. My widgets are gone, the mouse is back to the defult settings etc. Is there something I need to toggle on so the system saves these settings?
 
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From my experiance, as I too have only had a Mac since Monday, is the .dmg file is like a .iso but in OSX you can mount it, install it and then trash it. This is one thing I love about OSX.
Your second question I cant help you with, I havent had that happen to me.
 
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1. You have it exactly correct.
2. Did you happen to change the name of your home folder? If you do then you will lose all of the settings because the computer will create a new home directory, rename it to what it originally was to restore the settings. Also did you turn on FileVault by any chance. I have had it happen where FileVault will cause me to lose some settings
 
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J

J-Rod

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trpnmonkey41 said:
2. Did you happen to change the name of your home folder?

Thats exactly what I did. I did this because I'm the only user on the system and for whatever reason it has a folder set-up for 2 users (but in manage users, there's only one listed... me).

If I go into Finder, I have the home icon with the folder name how I want. But, if I go into Macintosh HD/Users/ it shows my home folder, plus another folder, then a shared folder.

It doesn't make sense to me to have a home folder that contains the desktop, documents, music and library folder, then have another user folder with the exact same folders.

Perhaps I'm missing something?? I'd ultimatly like the system to refrence my home folder for everything instead of it asking me where I want to store it
between the 2 users. Hope this makes sense ;)
 
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There should only be two folders in the HD/Users/ directory. Your name in lowercase and Shared. When you changed the name of the folder it created a new folder because you can't rename the home folder.
 
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J-Rod

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Okay, that was the problem then. I deleted the folder I renamed (which was the home folder I guess) and now I only have my name and a shared folder under the user directory.

For sanity reasons, when I open up Finder, on the sidebar I have 4 icons showing. My iBook g4, a Network icon, my HD icon and a application icon. For whatever reason, I can toggle on the Desktop and Home icon in the Finder preferences menu, but they don't show. Is that normal? I'm afraid that in my screwing around I managed to screw something up.

Thanks for the help thus far!! It's much appreciated.
 
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J-Rod said:
.... For whatever reason, I can toggle on the Desktop and Home icon in the Finder preferences menu, but they don't show. Is that normal? I'm afraid that in my screwing around I managed to screw something up.

Thanks for the help thus far!! It's much appreciated.
It is very possible that in your tinkering you might have caused some damage. First thing would be to do a Permissions Repair
Go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility
Then just select your HD from the left and choose Repair Permissions.

The worst case scenario might be an Archive and Install, but that would only be due to the fact that you altered your home folder too much.
A reinstall or Archive and Install should always be your LAST step to fix something.
 
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J-Rod

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Thanks DB. I just rebooted the machine and everything is good to go.

I wish there was a way to rename the home folder, but I can live with it.

Thanks for the help guys.
 

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