Mac OS X update weirdness?

On 3/26/07 11:29 AM, "TThompson" <terrence.thompsoncomcast.net> wrote:

> 10.4.9 seems to be incredibly buggy and it's probably the last 10.4 update.
> With 10.3.9, it did not work for me and I had to revert to my original system
> to get my iMac G5 working. My Mac mini Intel seems to be alright with what
> shipped with it so I won't try an upgrade until there is assurance that I
> won't spend hours or days trying to restore it.

I believe it's the update process and not the update itself that is causing
all of the problems. I feel like a broken record lately telling people to
reapply the Apple Combo updater.

Instead of trying to restore, use one of the third party applications to
create a boot drive with aliases back to your Documents folder. I use
SuperDuper! It has this function built into the application and is called a
"Sandbox". If things go wrong with an update, just boot back into the
original volume.

<http://www.shirt-pocket.com/>

Just a fan of SuperDuper!

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP

On Mar 26, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

>> Some third party software vendors that I contacted seem to think
>> 10.3.8 is the best.
>
> Which vendors are these?

The cynical several of my multiple personalities say, in chorus, "The
ones whose work is broken by security updates since 10.3.9 came out."

   --John

Hello Randy and the other respondents,

After looking at your comments and suggestions, I will upgrade to
10.4.9.

Perhaps I've seen too many upgrade panics described on MacFixIt and
elsewhere. It had lessened my confidence in 10.3.9 and 10.4.9. I
suppose that those with problems are the most vocal.

My initial iMac G5 10.3.9 crash happened after installing Intego Virus
Barrier. After I restored from a clone to 10.3.6, the system behaved
reasonably well so I left it there. However, some software that I would
like to use requires at least 10.3.9 so 10.4.9 should be fine.

Thanks again,

Terry Thompson

Le 26 mars 07 à 20:29, TThompson a écrit :

> It certainly would be helpful if someone would post a list of
> reasonably stable versions of 10.3 and 10.4. Some third party
> software vendors that I contacted seem to think 10.3.8 is the best.
> Perhaps Apple is threatening anyone that would attempt such an info
> service.

Most compatible/stable realeases (I can remember to have observed
thru my forums)

10.2.8
10.3.8
10.3.9
10.4.7
10.4.9

I may add 10.4.4 which is as the others releases that some musician
users keep as working soundly.

On my own: 10.3.9 and 10.4.9

It seems that for 10.3 and 10.4, Apple corrected most of the problems
from the 10.3.3 and 10.4.3 versions on (with sometimes hiccups, but
nothing dreadful). Right now, the only stability issues I see are for
a long time mainly Java apps (not all, but some). (note, I have not
used 10.4 to 10.4.2)

My experience tend to make me think stability issues persons
encounter on OS X are third party/something badly coded/installed
driven most of the time. The trouble is to find what/do the right
thing to get rid of it.

Note that I'm not using airport so can't relate to the issues
regarding it.

> 10.4.9 seems to be incredibly buggy and it's probably the last 10.4
> update. With 10.3.9, it did not work for me and I had to revert to
> my original system to get my iMac G5 working. My Mac mini Intel
> seems to be alright with what shipped with it so I won't try an
> upgrade until there is assurance that I won't spend hours or days
> trying to restore it.

Now if you have installed Tiger over a panther, you're heading for
trouble, same if you never have the BSD scripts running (at night
automatically or mod the hours with OnyX or Xupport for example). Do
you repair permissions after installs? Do you repair the system drive
and permissions before updates and repair permissions again after? Do
you use the Combo updates or the automatic incremental build-in
updates? Use Combo!

I'd check the RAM too (use the Apple Hardware Test, Memtest or Rember)
Have you enough RAM?
Have you enough free hard drive real estate?

99,99% of what's not going right on OS X (personal non-scientific
data) is either bad install issues, bad maintenance, third party bugs
(and there are some…). The 0,01% left are enough to fuel the debug to-
do list in Cupertino but rarely concern everyone.

Now if you could be a little bit more specific about the bugs you
encounter if you please?

Denis H] lepetitmartien
=======================================================
M.I.C. • http://www.macmusic.org • http://www.440forums.com

Several people have advised that the Combo Updater is the safest
updating route.

But, I am a bit confused by that advice.

I assume you mean the updater on the Apple site that would take you
from the original 10.4.0 up to the latest version in one step. But to
go that way, I need to be running 10.4.0, or do a clean install. Is
that what people are suggesting?

My practice is to install every update a few days after it is
released. The thought of doing a clean installation of 10.4 and then
downloading the now-monstrously-large Updater is a bit off-putting.
If I want to keep current, I would be doing this five to ten times a
year.

Am I missing something?


--
Nick Pappas

On Mar 26, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Randy B. Singer wrote:

>> Some third party software vendors that I contacted seem to think
>> 10.3.8 is the best.
>
> Which vendors are these?

The last vendor I can find is for Hardware Monitor from Marcel Bresink.

There were a few others but I'm not sure where I filed them.

Terry Thompson

On Mar 27, 2007, at 3:43 AM, Diane Ross wrote:
>Instead of trying to restore, use one of the third party applications to
> create a boot drive with aliases back to your Documents folder. I use
> SuperDuper! It has this function built into the application and is called a
> "Sandbox". If things go wrong with an update, just boot back into the
> original volume.

Excellent advice.

I always use SuperDuper! which has been very handy on several
occasions. That's how I reverted to my original system.

I only use combo updates for system upgrades. Is booting into Safe Boot
the safest way to upgrade? I recall this being mentionedd but do not
have the comment source.

Terry Thompson

> Perhaps I've seen too many upgrade panics described on MacFixIt and
> elsewhere.

I'm not trying to denigrate MacFixIt in any way, but I have found
that -- by definition -- MacFixIt attracts disproportionately large
numbers of problem reports. I'm not saying that issues posted on
MacFixIt aren't real (for those people), but the focus of the site is
on reporting (and finding solutions to them). So you don't get the
balance of seeing how many people successfully applied an update. If
you see 200 reports of problems associated with an update, that seems
like a lot. But considering there are millions of Mac users, it's
probably due to specific system issues. Sometimes more wide-spread
trends and problems do emerge (cf. the FireWire bug in one of the
10.3 updates). But it pays to monitor reports for these trends and
not assume that 'a lot' of problem reports means a generally buggy
update.

Again, this isn't to denigrate MacFixIt or imply that the service it
provides isn't useful. I'm just saying that one needs to consider the
wider context when trying to understand whether a particular update
is generally problematic.

_________________
=> Jolin

--On 3/27/2007 2:01 PM -0700 Nick Pappas wrote:

> Several people have advised that the Combo Updater is the safest
> updating route.
>
> But, I am a bit confused by that advice.
>
> I assume you mean the updater on the Apple site that would take you
> from the original 10.4.0 up to the latest version in one step. But to
> go that way, I need to be running 10.4.0, or do a clean install.

Nope. The "combo updater" takes you from ANYTHING, 10.4.0 through 10.4.8,
up to 10.4.9.

Dave

Hi,

This is very interesting.

I did install 10.4 over 10.3 on my wife's iMac G3 (originally an OS 9
Mac where I replaced the hard drive, partitioned it and installed both
OS 9 and 10.2) with no problems. It runs great now which surprised me.
Most of the applications on the G3 are just earlier versions of what I
use now. She uses Airport which works fine after the Apple Genius
corrected all the screw-ups made by the Comcast installer.

I always repair the drive and permissions with Disk Utility before and
after any install on any Mac. I also check with DiskWarrior 3 for 10.3
and DiskWarrior 4 for 10.4, Drive Genius 1.5.3 for 10.4 and TechTool
4.0.5 to see if any glitches are there and fix them (if any, minor
date corrections, etc. are the usual suspects) before installations of
software or updates. I repeat this routine after installs/upgrades too.
The iMac G5 has 1.5 of DDR SDRAM which checks out OK with any test
suites that I have ( Apple Hardware Test and TechTool Pro) and the
Apple Store Genius said that the memory was fine.

When you talk about installing over a previous system, that seems the
easiest way to avoid reinstalling all my software which is tedious at
best in OS X. I don't want to wipe the drive clean and start over—if I
have to do that, I'll get and install a larger internal drive first. I
do update all applications when updates are available--after waiting a
few weeks to make sure that they work for others. My must-have
applications are Microsoft Office 2004, Adobe Acrobat 7 Pro, Adobe
Photoshop Elements 3, QuarkXPress 6.1, Readiris 9 (I have Readiris 11
but have not installed it yet), GraphicConverter, iCal, my browsers and
Apple's e-mail for everyday or a few times a week use. I have an
inexpensive HP printer and the HP AiO software has caused some nuisance
login problems. I check the logs and delete the problem HP files. I
have Virus Barrier 4 running all the time unless installers say to
disable it.

I offload all new files each day on to one external drive (and a flash
drive hourly) and archive the files to a second (no system installed)
external drive to keep at least 15GB free on the drive. Once a week I
do the complete SuperDuper clone update to two different external
drives. I use OnyX once a week to tidy up things.

Did you mean that I should use Archive and Install? I did it for the
10.3.9 upgrade and trying to revert which was not working using Apple's
suggestions. I always use combo updates for system change. With the
10.3.9 install, all I got was a grey display and the kernel panic
screen. I even took it to a Genius Bar (after reinstalling my
SuperDuper clone so that it worked and they could not pinpoint any
problem. I have AppleCare so fixing something that broke is not an
issue.

Your list of stable/compatible versions did help, thank you.

That's all I can think of now. I don't feel comfortable using the
terminal so I just buy software that will do the same thing.

Thanks,

Terry Thompson

Thanks to all those who responded to my original message on this thread.
Your advice has been greatly appreciated.

Luckily, I have a friend who is a computer engineer and he offered to have a
look at my G5 after I had used the automatic software update, and been
confronted with the blue screen of death. I took over my G5 to his place,
together with the external hard drive which had the bootable copy of my boot
drive (thanks to Randy Singer's earlier advice, I had bought Super Duper and
had done the back up).

What my friend discovered was that the update problem may well have
triggered other issues, relating to hardware. My new 2 GB RAMs may have been
faulty and were promptly replaced by the vendor. And my sound card was not
properly embedded in its slot.

The whole maintenance exercise took about a week but I now have the fastest
startup system I have ever experienced, on either a Mac or a PC. It was
worth the wait.

Being an engineer, my friend insisted on doing a thorough examination of my
G5 instead of just doing a system re-install. I am certainly glad that he
did. Just re-installing the system may have avoided the blue screen of
death, but it would have masked the hardware problems which would probably
have quietly plagued the G5 for months before the next blue screen of death.

Once again, thanks for your advice,

Paul

On Mar 27, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Nick Pappas wrote:

> Several people have advised that the Combo Updater is the safest
> updating route.
>
> But, I am a bit confused by that advice.
>
> I assume you mean the updater on the Apple site that would take you
> from the original 10.4.0 up to the latest version in one step. But to
> go that way, I need to be running 10.4.0, or do a clean install. Is
> that what people are suggesting?

First, of course, the PowerPC and the Intel updaters differ
(throughout the part of Tiger's lifetime that includes Intel). And
server differs from desktop.

With that out of the way:

Nick, the combo updater for 10.4.9 can take ANY (non-broken)
installation of 10.4.anything up to 10.4.9.

The downloadable "delta" updaters can only take (non-broken) 10.4.8
to 10.4.9. If somehow the 10.4.8 is missing something it should
have, and that something isn't changed between 10.4.8 and 10.4.9 it
will still be stale after the delta update. The advantage of a delta
update is where there are several machines, all at 10.4.8. Apple
says in one place that you can download the full delta once and
update all those machines with it. (The license says you can't, but
they pretty clearly don't mean that, but just use a generic license.)

The update you get in Software Update is customized to include only
what is needed. (Unless the customization goes awry--which it seems
to fairly often in that going back and applying the combo really does
fix lots of problems caused by Software Update.)

The download from Software Update is generally smaller than the
delta, and that is smaller than the combo (lots smaller for the Intel
machines, although "less large" would say that better than "smaller").

   --John
--
John W Baxter
jwbaxtermac.com

On 3/27/07 at 2:01 PM, Nick Pappas <ngpappasnii.net> wrote:

> I assume you mean the updater on the Apple site that would take you
> from the original 10.4.0 up to the latest version in one step. But to
> go that way, I need to be running 10.4.0, or do a clean install. Is
> that what people are suggesting?

No. The combo updaters will apply everything required to update any
version to the version the updater contains. They will even install on
the same version as they're applying--no need to roll back or do a clean
install. So if you think you've got a borked 10.4.9 install from a
regular update, just run the 10.4.9 Combo Updater on that system. More
often than not, that will square things up just fine.

- Todd
--
Computer haiku:
Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down.

On Mar 27, 2007, at 1:43 AM, Terrence Thompson wrote:

> After looking at your comments and suggestions, I will upgrade to
> 10.4.9.
>
> Perhaps I've seen too many upgrade panics described on MacFixIt and
> elsewhere.

It is true that an abnormally large number of folks are experiencing
problems with the upgrade process itself. Generally it seems that
downloading the combo updater and using that instead of Software
Update is a more reliable way to go.

With any update a certain number of third party applications and
utilities are going to break. This isn't so much a problem with the
update as it is that the third party vendor just hasn't had a chance
to update their product yet.

But even if you follow MacFixIt and Macintouch, I don't see anyone
claiming that any version of OS X is "unstable." If you are
experiencing problems you just need to get things sorted out. We're
here to help you with that, if the need arises.

Randy B. Singer

On 27/03/07, Jolin M Warren <JolinWarrenoakandapple.org> wrote:
> I'm not trying to denigrate MacFixIt in any way, but I have found
> that -- by definition -- MacFixIt attracts disproportionately large
> numbers of problem reports. I'm not saying that issues posted on
> MacFixIt aren't real (for those people), but the focus of the site is
> on reporting (and finding solutions to them). So you don't get the
> balance of seeing how many people successfully applied an update. If
> you see 200 reports of problems associated with an update, that seems
> like a lot. But considering there are millions of Mac users, it's
> probably due to specific system issues.

Definitely. One'd think I'm extremely lucky, because I never bother to:
- repair permissions, be it before or after an update.
- use combo updaters
- use DiskWarrior at that time either (I do run it once in a while, though)
- flush caches, or use Onyx or similar tools
- wait a few days before installing new Mac OS versions

And I've never had any problems (except those caused by some
third-party software in need of an update). The same for my friends
using Macs.

There's always been lots of superstition in the Mac world (recall the
"repair your desktop" myths), and the added complexity of Mac OS X
enhances the phenomenon.

-Thomas

On 3/27/07 7:04 PM, "Terrence Thompson" <tethompsonaol.com> wrote:

> Did you mean that I should use Archive and Install? I did it for the
> 10.3.9 upgrade and trying to revert which was not working using Apple's
> suggestions. I always use combo updates for system change. With the
> 10.3.9 install, all I got was a grey display and the kernel panic
> screen. I even took it to a Genius Bar (after reinstalling my
> SuperDuper clone so that it worked and they could not pinpoint any
> problem. I have AppleCare so fixing something that broke is not an
> issue.

It sounds like you need to use the "Sandbox" option in SuperDuper! Read the
manual to set one up. It will save you a lot of trouble.

--
Diane

> It is true that an abnormally large number of folks are experiencing
> problems with the upgrade process itself. Generally it seems that
> downloading the combo updater and using that instead of Software
> Update is a more reliable way to go.
>
> With any update a certain number of third party applications and
> utilities are going to break. This isn't so much a problem with the
> update as it is that the third party vendor just hasn't had a chance
> to update their product yet.
>
> But even if you follow MacFixIt and Macintouch, I don't see anyone
> claiming that any version of OS X is "unstable." If you are
> experiencing problems you just need to get things sorted out. We're
> here to help you with that, if the need arises.

> Randy B. Singer

Thanks Randy,

I feel better about updating now. I'll probably just go to my 10.4
install discs and then update to 10.4.9.

Terry Thompson

On Mar 29, 2007, at 2:54 PM, Diane Ross wrote:

>It sounds like you need to use the "Sandbox" option in SuperDuper! Read
>the manual to set one up. It will save you a lot of trouble.

Thanks Diane,

I'll give it a try.

Terry

Randy B. Singer wrote:

> It is true that an abnormally large number of folks are experiencing
> problems with the upgrade process itself. Generally it seems that
> downloading the combo updater and using that instead of Software
> Update is a more reliable way to go.
> ...
> But even if you follow MacFixIt and Macintouch, I don't see anyone
> claiming that any version of OS X is "unstable." If you are
> experiencing problems you just need to get things sorted out. We're
> here to help you with that, if the need arises.
>
Actually there is a common element to the issues described in various
places. USB. Not sure what all is there but a lot of USB devices seem to
be having trouble after this update. At a minimum I'd disconnect all but
the keyboard and mouse before running the update. Well after you make a
backup. :)

Oh, yeah, there is an issue with OS 9 clients logging into folders
shared from OS X. Don't remember if it's server only or include
workstation sharing also.

David Ross

I have 2 Macs - an iBook and a MacBook. After the 10.4.9 update (didn't use the combo) it seems my Bonjour USB printer cannot be used from either machine. It worked fine up until that update. I run an Airport Express and an Airport Extreme and Love Them! Any clues?