the honeymoon is over, the new car smell has faded

[rone]

My Mac experience has quickly turned to shit.

• The M$ Office updater downloaded a huge update and then failed to install it.  I tried again and the result was the same.  Also, the file was nowhere to be found.  I ended up downloading and installing it manually.
• The OS X 10.4.6 update downloaded and failed about a quarter through the installation.  The file was nowhere to be found even though the failure message claimed i could locate it in the Finder.  I tried the updater again and now it hangs during "Checking for updates...", with the progress bar about 25% full.  I downloaded the update manually, but when it says "Select a volume for installation", my hard drive never appears.  It's just blank.
• I downloaded and installed the latest iPod update.  After a reboot, iTunes ran fine.  After another reboot, iTunes crashed when i ran it, and when i reopened it, it ate my library.

Needless to say, none of this ever happened to me on Windows.  So if any of you Macheads have any tips for dealing with getting the OS update to work, that would be swell.

Comments

[iayork.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd seen the recommendation to run permissions repair on MacFixit, but I don't see it on their list of suggestions for 10.4.6. Maybe I misread or misremembered, or maybe they've changed their suggestions. In any case, repairing permissions can't possibly do any harm, and may possibly help, so parroting Daring Fireball as rationale for not doing it, is at least as voodoo as the rationale for doing it.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

I "parroted" DF because he was (a) concise, (b) funny and (c) correct. I apologize for not typing out my own less funny and concise version.

Sorry, but "do this, it might help and 'probably' won't hurt," in the absence of either a recommendation from the vendor or any diagnostic work to suggest necessity is the very essence of voodoo systems administration. (Or maybe "cargo cult systems administration" would be a more accurate description.)

Research first, fix second.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking that... "What's the distinction between voodoo and cargo cult sysadmin work?"

[iayork.livejournal.com]

Does this sound familiar? From MacFixit (http://www.macfixit.com/)'s info on the 10.4.6 upgrade:

Startup will not proceed after update process fails Several users are running into an issue where Mac OS X 10.4.6 installation seems to proceed normally but stalls suddenly and presents an error message indicating that the update was placed in the trash, and the installer should be re-launched from the Finder.

Some users are then unable to successfully restart, even after re-attempting application of the update.

If you are experiencing a similar issue, you may want to try some of the suggestions listed in this tutorial.

In particular, users are having success with booting from their Mac OS X installation disc (by holding the "C" key during startup with the disc inserted), then going to the "Utilities" menu, selecting "Disk Utility" and repairing the startup disk, as well as repairing permissions on the startup disk. This, and other workarounds are contained in the aforementioned tutorial.

Of course, dr memory explains that repairing permissions is useless, so you'll take his word over MacFixit's.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Heh. He said that repairing permissions before or after a patch is useless.

That is exactly the error i saw. I will try this installation disc maneuver and see how it goes, thanks.

[haineux.livejournal.com]

Let me just say this long, extremely shameful, Apple confession:

• "Repair Permissions" used to not be voodoo, shamefully enough. Even these days, for reasons I have yet to understand, sometimes the permissions on the folder into which Software Update downloads stuff get pooched, and therefore Software Update fails to download updates. Sometimes it does download updates and decide they cannot be checksum-verified.

I am pretty sure that this problem is all fixed these days, but I've said that before.

Also:
• "Verify Disk" should always be voodoo in 10.4 or later. You should never see any errors whatsoever. But if you do see an error, it means the following:

SHUTDOWN NOW, START UP FROM DIFFERENT DRIVE, and RECOVER YOUR DATA IMMEDIATELY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING STILL READING THIS? GIT!

[haineux.livejournal.com]

While I am at it, let me add the OTHER condition that can come up. In addition to the lower-level disk structure, which fsck and Verify Disk deal with, and the high-level permissions that "Repair Permissions" deals with, there's potentially problems that happen with the directory structure. fsck and "Verify Disk" are supposed to deal with this, but sometimes their repair-fu is not powerful enough.

For this case, I strongly recommend Disk Warrior, from Alsoft. You can make a bootable CD which you can then run, and it will do a huge amount of detective work and testing to determine what the directory structure SHOULD be, and then allow you to replace it in a failsafe manner. (Even it occasionally hangs or fails, though.)

This can save your butt. Rarely, but it's cheaper than recreating data for angry clients.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I think voodoo sysadmins believe that their actions can connect two unrelated things with invisible lines, while cargo cult admins are conditioned to an inductive reasoning that suggests that things coincident are connected through the incomprehensible black box. The former rejects reason, while the latter is just really bad at it.

Orientation of the Island

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

Voodoo SysAdmin derives it's self from the older school of SysAdmin by mixtures of Roman Catholic and West African Religious Ritualism.

Cargo Cult System Admin is the more modern form of the problem derived from the Occupation of Papua/New Guinea and various other south western pacific islands by the air transport services of the Anglo-American Occupation forces during WWII, and thus has the more advanced manifestation of holding to being modern - including dressing up as Air Transport Air Craft, Radio Control Tower Personnel, and other persons doing very technical looking things.

Very Clear and Compelling Distinctions in the Manifestion of The Divine Rituals.

I do hope that this helps.