Can't verify disk from boot volume

On Mar 15, 2008, at 6:54 PM, Robert A. (Bob) Hall wrote:

> I can't Verify my boot Volume using Disk Utility while on the boot
> volume. [...]
> My OS is version 10.4.3.
>
> Can anyone tell me what the problem might be.

Yes. You're running 10.4.3.

Update to 10.4.6 (I think) or higher and this limitation goes away.

You might as well bring it all the way up to 10.4.11 while you're at
it, and your computer probably has a slew of other updates it needs.
Run Software Update a few times until it can't find anything new any
more.


--
Chris Devers

At 15:54 -0700 UTC, on 2008-03-15, Robert A. (Bob) Hall wrote:

> I can't Verify my boot Volume using Disk Utility while on the boot
> volume. The Verify button remains grayed out. [...]
> My OS is version 10.4.3.

You're trolling, right? 10.4.3 stems from October 2005. It 2.2 years older[*]
than 10.4.11. It is 2.5 years older[*] than recent Security Updates and such.
Why is it that people don't bother to keep their OS up to date? What is so
hard about allowing Software Update to do its thing?

> Can anyone tell me what the problem might be.

The above. The ability to verify the boot volume was introduced in 10.4.5 IIRC.


[*] According to <http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/>


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

>> I can't Verify my boot Volume using Disk Utility while on the boot
>> volume. The Verify button remains grayed out. [...]
>> My OS is version 10.4.3.
>
> You're trolling, right? 10.4.3 stems from October 2005. It 2.2
> years older[*]
> than 10.4.11. It is 2.5 years older[*] than recent Security Updates
> and such.
> Why is it that people don't bother to keep their OS up to date?
> What is so
> hard about allowing Software Update to do its thing?.....

It is not necessarily "So Hard" to keep up to date with software
updates, but I do sometimes wait until the braver people on TidBits
have reported only "Few problems" before letting the automatic
process start.

I did lose a battery to a software update in the past. That could
have been avoided by reading TidBits 10 days later: so I leave my
preferences on Auto ~ but watch what I allow to go ahead.

At 3:20 AM -0700 3/16/08, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Why is it that people don't bother to keep their OS up to date? What is so
>hard about allowing Software Update to do its thing?

        To be fair, if you are on dialup, the updating can be a real pain
in the patootie.

        Getting an external hard drive or some flash drives and having a
friend download the latest 10.4.11 combo update
(MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.11PPC.dmg or MacOSXUpdCombo10.4.11Intel.dmg) and the
latest Quicktime and Itunes installers could save a lot of time on the
phone - you will also want a copy of "SecUpd2008-001Univ.dmg"

        You can skip all of the other security updates until after you have
installed 10.4.11 - a bunch of the 2007 ones are rolled into 10.4.11 and
the rest are in SecUpd2008-001 I believe.

        I try to keep a copy of various updates as they come up so when I
am at a client's place I can run Software Update to see what needs to be
updated and then run the stand-alone updaters to save downloading time.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

At 00:58 -0700 UTC, on 2008-03-18, Johann Beda wrote:

> At 3:20 AM -0700 3/16/08, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>>Why is it that people don't bother to keep their OS up to date? What is so
>>hard about allowing Software Update to do its thing?
>
> To be fair, if you are on dialup, the updating can be a real pain
> in the patootie.

Absolutely. But ignoring 2.5 years of free bug fixes and plugged security
holes can be a lot more painful.

As you say, you can probably get the biggest updates (Combo Updaters, QT
updates, etc.) on CD from a friend, or from your local friendly Mac dealer.
Then fetch the latest Security Updates over your slow connection. Security
Updates are worth even a two hour download.

Two practical approaches to download updates over slow connections:
- Let Software Update explicitly download the files, so you can burn them to
CD. Then in case you'd ever need to install it all from scratch, you won't
have to download it all again.
- If your connection is unstable and, as I believe is the case, Software
Update doesn't allow resuming of partly fetched updates, you can instead rely
on Software Update to tell you which updates are needed, and then download
those from Apple's web site with a http client that allows resuming. iCab,
curl, wget, and whatever else does. (With that approach, you don't have the
luxury of Software Update verifying the update's integrity. So you might want
to that manually. See <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75510>.)


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On 18-Mar-2008, at 01:58, Johann Beda wrote:
> To be fair, if you are on dialup, the updating can be a real pain
> in the patootie.

Take ipod to Apple store, have them load up the updates you need.

At 6:24 AM -0700 3/19/08, LewisGmail wrote:
>On 18-Mar-2008, at 01:58, Johann Beda wrote:
>> To be fair, if you are on dialup, the updating can be a real pain
>> in the patootie.
>
>Take ipod to Apple store, have them load up the updates you need.

        You mean, "Buy an iPod or similar device, and drive thousands of
kilometers to get to one of the four Apple Stores in Canada" (three of
which are in Toronto and the other in Montreal, thus serving generously 8.6
million out of 33.4 million total). I suspect that other parts of the world
are similarly undeserved.

        In any case, even if an Apple store is conveniently located, it
still is an extra bit of work that makes keeping on top of Software Updates
more of a hassle.


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

At 1:55 PM -0700 3/18/08, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Two practical approaches to download updates over slow connections:
>- Let Software Update explicitly download the files, so you can burn them to
>CD. Then in case you'd ever need to install it all from scratch, you won't
>have to download it all again.

        Where does SU store them? Back in 10.2 and 10.3 I recall they were
in a particular spot, but I do not know where that is any more.
--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

At 10:39 -0400 UTC, on 2008-03-19, Johann Beda wrote:

> At 1:55 PM -0700 3/18/08, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

[... saved SU downloads]

> Where does SU store them? Back in 10.2 and 10.3 I recall they were
> in a particular spot, but I do not know where that is any more.

I believe they end up in /Libary/Packages (at least in Tiger).


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

If you really don't want, or can't, update the OS, but must check the boot volume and are not afraid to type some Unix commands, you can always boot in "single user mode". Restart your Mac and hold down the Cmd-S keys until you see white text on a black screen appear. Then release the keys and let all the text fly by until you see a command prompt waiting for your input. To check and repair your disk type "fsck -y" (without the quotes), press the Enter-key and wait for the process to finish. To reboot your Mac, just type "reboot" and press the Enter-key.

On Mar 20, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 10:39 -0400 UTC, on 2008-03-19, Johann Beda wrote:
>
>> At 1:55 PM -0700 3/18/08, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>
> [... saved SU downloads]
>
>> Where does SU store them? Back in 10.2 and 10.3 I recall they were
>> in a particular spot, but I do not know where that is any more.
>
> I believe they end up in /Libary/Packages (at least in Tiger).

If you explicitly tell SU to save updates, or pre-download them,
that's where they end up.

It would have been nicer if it were just /Library/Packages, but it's
more complex than that.

If you leave the default to just download on demand, when running
updates, they end up several layers down under ~/Library/Caches/ --
the folder would be dynamically & randomly named in part by what
distributed server you ended up receiving the update files from.

Frustratingly, if you're trying to update several machines, it isn't
enough to just download the updates once and stash them in /Library/
Packages either -- the system won't notice that the packages are
locally available, and will go through the process of redownloading
them anyway. You can probably poke some plist file to convince SU that
the updates are already available, but I never got around to figuring
out how, and Leopard mostly seems to work better anyway, so I stopped
trying under Tiger.


--
Chris Devers

On 03/20/2008 09:17 AM, "Frans Moquette" <fransmoquette.nl> wrote:

> If you really don't want, or can't, update the OS, but must check the boot
> volume and are not afraid to type some Unix commands, you can always boot in
> "single user mode". Restart your Mac and hold down the Cmd-S keys until you
> see white text on a black screen appear. Then release the keys and let all the
> text fly by until you see a command prompt waiting for your input. To check
> and repair your disk type "fsck -y" (without the quotes), press the Enter-key
> and wait for the process to finish. To reboot your Mac, just type "reboot" and
> press the Enter-key.

That should be:

fsck -fy

(The f option is needed for journaled filesystems, which most modern-ish
macs have)

--
John C. Welch

And for those intimidated by the command line, another way to implement fsck is to boot up while holding down a Shift key until the words Safe Boot appear. Be patient because fsck can take several minutes depending on how much stuff is on the hard drive. I often place a small but dense object on the shift key to hold it down.

Applejack is another way to check the drive (as well as clear caches). <http://applejack.sourceforge.net/>

On 3/20/08 at 7:17 AM, fransmoquette.nl (Frans Moquette) wrote:

>If you really don't want, or can't, update the OS, but must check
>the boot volume and are not afraid to type some Unix commands, you
>can always boot in "single user mode". Restart your Mac and hold
>down the Cmd-S keys until you see white text on a black screen
>appear. Then release the keys and let all the text fly by until you
>see a command prompt waiting for your input. To check and repair
>your disk type "fsck -y" (without the quotes), press the Enter-key
>and wait for the process to finish. To reboot your Mac, just type
>"reboot" and press the Enter-key.

Note, if journaling is enabled you would need to type "fsck -fy".

Also, regardless of whether journaling is enabled it is good
practice to repeat fsck if result of running it the first time
indicated changes to your file system were made.

On Mar 21, 2008, at 8:50 AM, Apta <HOOKFWEAQDIWspammotel.com> wrote:

> And for those intimidated by the command line, another way to
> implement fsck is to boot up while holding down a Shift key until
> the words Safe Boot appear.

I usually start up in Single user mode with command-s at the start.
Never had to use the "Safe mode". Is it any better?

> Applejack is another way to check the drive (as well as clear
> caches). <http://applejack.sourceforge.net/>

I don't think this has been updated for 10.5.2 yet, but have used it
in the past with good success. Apple shpuld build something like this
into their system.

Ray

To answer your query, you can only verify the boot volume if journaling is enabled on it. That change was introduced in 10.4.6 or thereabouts.

Leopard inconsistently puts the packages (as folders) into either /Library/Updates/ or ~/Downloads/. IIRC, if the update requires a restart to complete the installation, they're put in the former; if not, then the latter—bug filed on this inconsistency. Note however, that after a restart those placed into /Library/Updates/ are erased—bug filed for this one, also. The only way to preserve the downloaded updates is to manually copy them from /Library/Updates/ to another location (I use a Desktop folder) before clicking on the Restart button. Then, after the updates are installed, put them back into /Library/Updates/.

At 10:43 AM -0400 3/20/08, Chris Devers wrote:
>Frustratingly, if you're trying to update several machines, it isn't
>enough to just download the updates once and stash them in /Library/
>Packages either -- the system won't notice that the packages are
>locally available, and will go through the process of redownloading
>them anyway.

        I seem to recall seeing some info on using a local web proxy to
cache updates...where was that... oh yes, here it is: Note that the
responses include a bunch of options for doing it in different manners - I
like the idea of using Squidman.

<http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071009082248452>

 Create a transparent local software update server
Wed, Oct 10 '07 at 7:30AM PDT * Submitted by zpjet OS X Server
This is a way to transparently set up a server to cache software updates on
your local network. This doesn't require any modifications (defaults
write...) on clients -- it just works. And I didn't find any other similar
solution on the internet; not even here! It does require Mac OS X Server,
however. Here's how we did it:

--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *