Why is verifying and repairing your HD a must before updating?
Because little errors pile up. Sometimes they are rectified by the simple task of checking the drive, and Disk Utility doesn't let you know. But, if your drive does have a real problem, no matter how minor, when you install and update, that error can corrupt part of the install. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's major.
An example. Right before 10.4.5 came out, my machine seemed a bit sluggesh. Just by a tiny amount. I check my drives once a week, so I didn't think much of it.
When the update came out, I verified my drive, but Disk Utility said that it couldn't finish because the wrapper was corrupted (I don't recall the exact wording). It stated this in BOLD red type. Back up the drive etc.
I restarted from another drive that has all of my tools on it (and a CLEAN OS), and tried Disk Utility again, but this time set to fix the drive. Same notice.
I went to the current version of DiskWarrior (3.0.3) and tried again. It failed to replace the directory!
After turning the machine off and on a few times, waiting for the RAM to drain down each time, I tried DW again. This time it worked. I tried Disk Utility again. Fine. I then installed the update.
Many disk problems do not show any trouble during daily use, but if you don't check before an OS update (or upgrade), you are just asking for trouble.
Anytime you install anything at all on a drive with any kind of directory trouble, you can install over some other bits of code, causing anything to happen. Or the code could have the wrong information, information the update needs to know.
And, you also have to remember to unmount all firewire drives, turn them off, and unplug them from the machine before doing any OS upgrade as well. Then after all is finished, you can turn them on, and plug them in again, before turning the machine back on.
Why is verifying and repairing your HD a must before updating?
Just one of those Mac weirdness. Some people claim it's just voodoo and some people claim it always helps to verify-repair your HD before any sort of upgrading.
I've got no problems 10.4.6 software update (not combo) works like a charm for me The only thing like I mentioned above is the dmproxy* issue that still seems to be around.
Melgross it's the first time I've heard about installing combo is better than software update but an interesting theory nonetheless. I like the idea that it's a "fresher, cleaner" kind of update rather than a "patching" kind of update.
I'm VERY surprised. If you go to both Macfixit.com, and Macintouch.com, you will find that this recommendation has been standard for years. Even back with System 9 and earlier. It's known to fix many problems that crop up after someone installs the Software Update version.
Even if we DIDN'T know that this should be done, if you think about it, you will realize that it makes sense.
Both drive verification and combo updates will save many a headache.
Well, after trying to boot with the option key and selecting the hard drive and the Tech Tools CD, I called. They had me try to boot in safe mode which also failed. Then they said to take it to the nearest repair place, 45 minutes away.
Well, I guess this answers the questions about a firmware update on the intel macs. We knew they were up to something. Looks like they have come out with a beta for dual booting windows XP. I thought they weren't going to spend time on this. Also, it looks like this capability will be in the next public release of OSX 10.5. I bet they also include some VM solution.
Well, I guess this answers the questions about a firmware update on the intel macs. We knew they were up to something. Looks like they have come out with a beta for dual booting windows XP. I thought they weren't going to spend time on this. Also, it looks like this capability will be in the next public release of OSX 10.5. I bet they also include some VM solution.
I'm a little upset, but not really. It's much better to have an apple solution than a 3rd party one.
But this means I have to backup ALL of my data AGAIN, remove the windows partition that I had made. reinstall OSX, and then install Boot Camp. Oh well, at least now I'll have a USEABLE windows partition, rather than one that I can't even get to connect to the internet.
Well, I guess this answers the questions about a firmware update on the intel macs. We knew they were up to something. Looks like they have come out with a beta for dual booting windows XP. I thought they weren't going to spend time on this. Also, it looks like this capability will be in the next public release of OSX 10.5. I bet they also include some VM solution.
We KNEW this was coming months ago. Apple's patent application for the Intel Mac anti piracy software spelled it out right up front.
I've been wondering ever since why everyone didn't understand this. I'veposted it all over the place. I'll post it again. Read down towards the bottom of the page, you can't miss it.
I've had .Mac syncing issues most of the day and I'm still on 10.4.5. Browsing the Apple support site shows I'm not the only one.
This feature is great when it works, but once you start depending on it it's a nightmare when it starts misbehaving.
I agree. I've been having synching problems since Tuesday. It happened just after I had upgraded one of my Macs to 10.4.6. I then synched a change I made to my Calendar, went to my 10.4.5 Mac, synched it, and the change posted correctly. However, the next morning when I was upgrading my Mac at work, synching no longer worked.
I called AppleCare and they said they were unaware of any .Mac synching problems, but referred me to their email .Mac support page. I sent an email off to the .Mac support staff and received a reply that basically said some .Mac users were reporting connectivity problems and to try this: shutdown all your Macs for 10 minutes, then restart one, and try synching again. I did and the problem persisted, sort of. Synching wasn't working, but the network errors became more sporadic. Basically, the synching appeared to run successfully (wheel spins, completes, says synching completed), but upon checking another Mac, the change didn't update.
The problem I have been having went like this: I tried to synch, it would start, but then fail with various network/connectivity/authentication errors. I even went so far as to ask our work network guys to check out the router and firewall, but nothing had changed there.
This morning at work I tried synching again, and it appears that things are looking up. I was able to synch successfully with my .Mac Address Book, but changes to my Bookmarks aren't posting yet. Since .Mac doesn't offer a way to look at your Calendar online, I haven't been able to check whether Calendar synching is working yet. When I get home and restart my home Macs I should be able to test that.
Even though AppleCare knew nothing of the .Mac synching issue, I got an email reply from the .Mac support staff in only a few hours after my posting. Late last night I sent a follow-up reply with additional info about my experience, but haven't heard anything back. Ironically, i think that's good. It's now clear that Apple is aware of the issue and working on it.
It'll be interesting to see if I get a follow-up from them when they think the issue is resolved.
Since .Mac doesn't offer a way to look at your Calendar online, I haven't been able to check whether Calendar synching is working yet....
Maybe I misunderstood you but... "Keep your friends and family in the loop. With a .Mac account (or your own WebDAV server), iCal lets you publish your calendar on the Internet so others can see when you?re available. And if they?re iCal users themselves, they can subscribe to your calendars."
Hi all, thanks for the comments. I actually do publish my calendars for selected users, but that's merely a copy of the calendar on my individual Mac, which then gets copied and updated somewhere to my .Mac iDisk space to be accessed by the third party.
That's not what I mean. I want to be able to go online to .Mac and see what the .Mac synchronization server has as the master copy of my calendar that's being used to synch all my Macs. That copy is NOT the same one I've published from an individual Mac to my .Mac iDisk space for sharing.
In fact, these published calendars have been working fine all this week, even though synching has not. Normally, when everything is working, they will certainly have the same content. When things are not working, as this week, they're not.
Only by making a change to my Mac's local calendar, selecting synch, and then logging online to .Mac to check the master calendar could I then determine that the synch server is working properly. At the present I have to go around to each of my Macs and resynch to see if the calendar updates.
You might ask why this is important. At the moment I am in fact publishing the local calendar on each of my Macs so that I can see events I posted at home while at the office. Normally, when I post a change at home and synch, that UPDATES the master calendar at .Mac and then updates that copy on my other Macs when they're next synched. So, I have only ONE copy of my Home calendar on each Mac, and one copy of my Work calendar on each Mac. This week I've had to publish these two calendars to see any changes between iCal at each of my Macs. So, I currently have multiple repetitive events on each day...one for each Mac's published calendar. With this setup, I'll only know the .Mac master calendar is synching properly when all the published calendars are the same.
It would be much easier for me to check if I could log into .Mac, select my calendar, and compare that to my local iCal calendar. I could then make a change, resynch, and check if the change posted to .Mac. If it did, I could then Unpublish the local calendars and return to having just ONE copy of each Home and Work calendar appear in iCal on each Mac, a copy that I could edit from any of my Macs and then view automatically on any of my other Macs later, as I've done just fine for the past couple of years.
Dave, I assume you were privy to this info posted on Apple support page
If you use iSync, you should perform a full sync with your devices before installing this update. Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update includes a later version of iSync with several improvements. For more information and before-you-install steps, see iSync 2.2: Read before updating to Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later, or before first sync.
Yes, before my first upgrade to 10.4.6 my .Mac synching worked fine. I even tested it just afterwards, and it still worked fine. I then went to another Mac still running 10.4.5 and synched it, and it recorded the changes I made to the first Mac after upgrading to 10.4.6. I then went back to the first Mac, resynched, and it caught the changes I'd just posted from the 10.4.5 Mac. In short, everything was working fine, just before and just after upgrading my first Mac to 10.4.6.
It was the next morning at work when I was attempting to do a special synch on that Mac in prep for upgrading it to 10.4.6 that I discovered synching was no longer working. I went ahead and upgraded to 10.4.6 without incident, although synching still failed after upgrading that Mac. Back at home that afternoon, I found that synching wasn't working there anymore either. That's when I began to suspect the problem was at the .Mac synchronization server end.
I called AppleCare and they were unaware of the issue, and pointed me to the .Mac email support address. I entered into email discussions with them over the next two days before it became crystal clear that the problem wasn't at my end. The forums were filling up with synching issues and people were blaming it on 10.4.6. I didn't agree with that assessment because synching had worked both before and after my 10.4.6 upgrades the first evening. I suspected a concurrent action that occurred with the 10.4.6 rollout.
When the smoke cleared, it became obvious that some synching changes were posted to the .Mac syncronization server at the time of the 10.4.6 rollout, probably to support the upgrade to iSync 2.2 on the Mac.
In any case, I ceased synching on my Macs, and instead published my work/home calendars to .Mac so I could subscribe to them from my other Macs. That permitted me to see items I had posted to my other Macs in the interim as a temporary solution, and it worked fine.
After the outage was resolved, I unpublished my calendars and deleted them from my .Mac iDisk. Everything's back to normal, and the only thing I lost were the Notes I had posted to Address Book records. That annoyed me, but it wasn't catastrophic. If I had chosen the Backup Database option instead of the Save to vCards option, I probably wouldn't have lost those notes either. It appears vCards don't support Notes, but I didn't know that then.
Comments
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Why is verifying and repairing your HD a must before updating?
Because little errors pile up. Sometimes they are rectified by the simple task of checking the drive, and Disk Utility doesn't let you know. But, if your drive does have a real problem, no matter how minor, when you install and update, that error can corrupt part of the install. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's major.
An example. Right before 10.4.5 came out, my machine seemed a bit sluggesh. Just by a tiny amount. I check my drives once a week, so I didn't think much of it.
When the update came out, I verified my drive, but Disk Utility said that it couldn't finish because the wrapper was corrupted (I don't recall the exact wording). It stated this in BOLD red type. Back up the drive etc.
I restarted from another drive that has all of my tools on it (and a CLEAN OS), and tried Disk Utility again, but this time set to fix the drive. Same notice.
I went to the current version of DiskWarrior (3.0.3) and tried again. It failed to replace the directory!
After turning the machine off and on a few times, waiting for the RAM to drain down each time, I tried DW again. This time it worked. I tried Disk Utility again. Fine. I then installed the update.
Many disk problems do not show any trouble during daily use, but if you don't check before an OS update (or upgrade), you are just asking for trouble.
Anytime you install anything at all on a drive with any kind of directory trouble, you can install over some other bits of code, causing anything to happen. Or the code could have the wrong information, information the update needs to know.
And, you also have to remember to unmount all firewire drives, turn them off, and unplug them from the machine before doing any OS upgrade as well. Then after all is finished, you can turn them on, and plug them in again, before turning the machine back on.
Originally posted by sunilraman
Originally posted by Gene Clean
Why is verifying and repairing your HD a must before updating?
Just one of those Mac weirdness. Some people claim it's just voodoo and some people claim it always helps to verify-repair your HD before any sort of upgrading.
I've got no problems 10.4.6 software update (not combo) works like a charm for me
Melgross it's the first time I've heard about installing combo is better than software update
*http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...&query=dmproxy
I'm VERY surprised. If you go to both Macfixit.com, and Macintouch.com, you will find that this recommendation has been standard for years. Even back with System 9 and earlier. It's known to fix many problems that crop up after someone installs the Software Update version.
Even if we DIDN'T know that this should be done, if you think about it, you will realize that it makes sense.
Both drive verification and combo updates will save many a headache.
Originally posted by melgross
Both drive verification and combo updates will save many a headache.
Drive verification, likely. Combo updates, perhaps. Like John Gruber, I just use Software Update.
On the topic of Repair Disk Permissions, there's much discussion here:
Exercises in Futility Part 2: Repairing Permissions is Useless
This sucks.
Originally posted by anaknipedro
Well, I guess this answers the questions about a firmware update on the intel macs. We knew they were up to something. Looks like they have come out with a beta for dual booting windows XP. I thought they weren't going to spend time on this. Also, it looks like this capability will be in the next public release of OSX 10.5. I bet they also include some VM solution.
I'm a little upset, but not really. It's much better to have an apple solution than a 3rd party one.
But this means I have to backup ALL of my data AGAIN, remove the windows partition that I had made. reinstall OSX, and then install Boot Camp. Oh well, at least now I'll have a USEABLE windows partition, rather than one that I can't even get to connect to the internet.
Originally posted by anaknipedro
Well, I guess this answers the questions about a firmware update on the intel macs. We knew they were up to something. Looks like they have come out with a beta for dual booting windows XP. I thought they weren't going to spend time on this. Also, it looks like this capability will be in the next public release of OSX 10.5. I bet they also include some VM solution.
We KNEW this was coming months ago. Apple's patent application for the Intel Mac anti piracy software spelled it out right up front.
I've been wondering ever since why everyone didn't understand this. I'veposted it all over the place. I'll post it again. Read down towards the bottom of the page, you can't miss it.
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.ph...esistant_code/
Originally posted by Xool
I've had .Mac syncing issues most of the day and I'm still on 10.4.5. Browsing the Apple support site shows I'm not the only one.
This feature is great when it works, but once you start depending on it it's a nightmare when it starts misbehaving.
I agree. I've been having synching problems since Tuesday. It happened just after I had upgraded one of my Macs to 10.4.6. I then synched a change I made to my Calendar, went to my 10.4.5 Mac, synched it, and the change posted correctly. However, the next morning when I was upgrading my Mac at work, synching no longer worked.
I called AppleCare and they said they were unaware of any .Mac synching problems, but referred me to their email .Mac support page. I sent an email off to the .Mac support staff and received a reply that basically said some .Mac users were reporting connectivity problems and to try this: shutdown all your Macs for 10 minutes, then restart one, and try synching again. I did and the problem persisted, sort of. Synching wasn't working, but the network errors became more sporadic. Basically, the synching appeared to run successfully (wheel spins, completes, says synching completed), but upon checking another Mac, the change didn't update.
The problem I have been having went like this: I tried to synch, it would start, but then fail with various network/connectivity/authentication errors. I even went so far as to ask our work network guys to check out the router and firewall, but nothing had changed there.
This morning at work I tried synching again, and it appears that things are looking up. I was able to synch successfully with my .Mac Address Book, but changes to my Bookmarks aren't posting yet. Since .Mac doesn't offer a way to look at your Calendar online, I haven't been able to check whether Calendar synching is working yet. When I get home and restart my home Macs I should be able to test that.
Even though AppleCare knew nothing of the .Mac synching issue, I got an email reply from the .Mac support staff in only a few hours after my posting. Late last night I sent a follow-up reply with additional info about my experience, but haven't heard anything back. Ironically, i think that's good. It's now clear that Apple is aware of the issue and working on it.
It'll be interesting to see if I get a follow-up from them when they think the issue is resolved.
Since .Mac doesn't offer a way to look at your Calendar online, I haven't been able to check whether Calendar synching is working yet....
Maybe I misunderstood you but... "Keep your friends and family in the loop. With a .Mac account (or your own WebDAV server), iCal lets you publish your calendar on the Internet so others can see when you?re available. And if they?re iCal users themselves, they can subscribe to your calendars."
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ical/
That's not what I mean. I want to be able to go online to .Mac and see what the .Mac synchronization server has as the master copy of my calendar that's being used to synch all my Macs. That copy is NOT the same one I've published from an individual Mac to my .Mac iDisk space for sharing.
In fact, these published calendars have been working fine all this week, even though synching has not. Normally, when everything is working, they will certainly have the same content. When things are not working, as this week, they're not.
Only by making a change to my Mac's local calendar, selecting synch, and then logging online to .Mac to check the master calendar could I then determine that the synch server is working properly. At the present I have to go around to each of my Macs and resynch to see if the calendar updates.
You might ask why this is important. At the moment I am in fact publishing the local calendar on each of my Macs so that I can see events I posted at home while at the office. Normally, when I post a change at home and synch, that UPDATES the master calendar at .Mac and then updates that copy on my other Macs when they're next synched. So, I have only ONE copy of my Home calendar on each Mac, and one copy of my Work calendar on each Mac. This week I've had to publish these two calendars to see any changes between iCal at each of my Macs. So, I currently have multiple repetitive events on each day...one for each Mac's published calendar. With this setup, I'll only know the .Mac master calendar is synching properly when all the published calendars are the same.
It would be much easier for me to check if I could log into .Mac, select my calendar, and compare that to my local iCal calendar. I could then make a change, resynch, and check if the change posted to .Mac. If it did, I could then Unpublish the local calendars and return to having just ONE copy of each Home and Work calendar appear in iCal on each Mac, a copy that I could edit from any of my Macs and then view automatically on any of my other Macs later, as I've done just fine for the past couple of years.
[B]Hi all, thanks for the comments.
Dave, I assume you were privy to this info posted on Apple support page
If you use iSync, you should perform a full sync with your devices before installing this update. Mac OS X 10.4.6 Update includes a later version of iSync with several improvements. For more information and before-you-install steps, see iSync 2.2: Read before updating to Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later, or before first sync.
at:http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303410
cheers
It was the next morning at work when I was attempting to do a special synch on that Mac in prep for upgrading it to 10.4.6 that I discovered synching was no longer working. I went ahead and upgraded to 10.4.6 without incident, although synching still failed after upgrading that Mac. Back at home that afternoon, I found that synching wasn't working there anymore either. That's when I began to suspect the problem was at the .Mac synchronization server end.
I called AppleCare and they were unaware of the issue, and pointed me to the .Mac email support address. I entered into email discussions with them over the next two days before it became crystal clear that the problem wasn't at my end. The forums were filling up with synching issues and people were blaming it on 10.4.6. I didn't agree with that assessment because synching had worked both before and after my 10.4.6 upgrades the first evening. I suspected a concurrent action that occurred with the 10.4.6 rollout.
When the smoke cleared, it became obvious that some synching changes were posted to the .Mac syncronization server at the time of the 10.4.6 rollout, probably to support the upgrade to iSync 2.2 on the Mac.
In any case, I ceased synching on my Macs, and instead published my work/home calendars to .Mac so I could subscribe to them from my other Macs. That permitted me to see items I had posted to my other Macs in the interim as a temporary solution, and it worked fine.
After the outage was resolved, I unpublished my calendars and deleted them from my .Mac iDisk. Everything's back to normal, and the only thing I lost were the Notes I had posted to Address Book records. That annoyed me, but it wasn't catastrophic. If I had chosen the Backup Database option instead of the Save to vCards option, I probably wouldn't have lost those notes either. It appears vCards don't support Notes, but I didn't know that then.