Shell scripts to migrate user settings and profiles from Windows to Linux

Woodsman · 04-25-2014, 10:06 PM

Do any of you IT wizards who deal with both Windows and Linux have any shell scripts handy to migrate user profiles and settings from Windows to Linux?

Mostly this would cover cross-platform apps. I am thinking this is basically copy the Windows setting directory to the equivalent "hidden" directory in the user's /home.

For example:

Firefox
Thunderbird
Chrome/Chromium
LibreOffice/OpenOffice
Pidgin
GIMP
Inkscape
Skype
Adobe Reader
VLC
SMPlayer
Miro
Dropbox
KeePass
Audacity
Hulu player

Downloads->/home/Downloads
My Documents->/home/Documents
My Music->/home/Music
My Pictures->/home/Pictures
My Scans->?
My Save Stuff->?
My Videos->/home/Videos
etc.

Thanks again.

willysr · 04-26-2014, 02:24 AM

As for Firefox or Chrome, you can use their sync feature to copy preferences to another machines

Habitual · 04-26-2014, 10:40 AM

Some Windows 'shell' environment variables that may help:

Code:

%APPDATA%
%USERPROFILE%

If you type "set" in cmd and start poking around, you'll see these. Some overlap the others.
But that should get you started.

My output for comparison:

Code:

C:\Users\Administrator>dir %appdata% %USERPROFILE% /b
Adobe
Download Manager
Dropbox
Duplicati
FileZilla
HeidiSQL
Macromedia
Mozilla
MySQL
Spark
VMware
webex
winscp.rnd
.csp_ovftool_settings.js
.S_O_L rc
Contacts
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Dropbox
Favorites
g2mdlhlpx.exe
Links
Music
Pictures
Saved Games
Searches
Videos

Woodsman · 05-29-2014, 01:33 AM

I was going to start a new thread but might as well use this thread.

I am looking for a method to migrate MRU lists from MS Office apps to LibreOffice apps. Ideally, something that is automated rather than manual.

Looks like MS Office apps store that information in the registry and LO apps store that information in ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/registrymodifications.xcu.

Any ideas to move the data from one to the other?

Thanks.

Habitual · 05-29-2014, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman

I was going to start a new thread but might as well use this thread.

I am looking for a method to migrate MRU lists from MS Office apps to LibreOffice apps. Ideally, something that is automated rather than manual.

Looks like MS Office apps store that information in the registry and LO apps store that information in ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/registrymodifications.xcu.

Any ideas to move the data from one to the other?

Thanks.

No clue about this one.
Registry data, I believe it binary in nature but it can be exported to .txt

Some locations seem to be recorded here...

Other than exporting those to a .txt file and running a grep over them to get them into registrymodifications.xcu in the proper format, I don't know of any 'automated' way to accomplish that.

Sorry, wish I had more.

Woodsman · 05-29-2014, 01:51 PM

Thanks for the link.

Next to find a good linux based Windows shortcut (lnk) parser. For example, system MRU lists are Windows lnk shortcuts.

Edit: Looks like the strings command will do the trick:

openlnk

Now to figure out which lnk files are worth migrating to a Linux system and how to insert the target information into recently-used.xbel.