Apple Nag

The following is my chronicle of the Snow Leopard installation on my primary computer, an early 2008 MacBook.

Anyone reading this blog knows that I have a lot of problems with Leopard, so I will do lots of backups first. I emit an aura that is deadly for computers and software so I just know I’m going to have problems.

1. 10:23 [00:00] Courier delivers Snow Leopard. Impressed with the packaging, particularly the way a film holds the disc box securely in place but is trivial to remove without cutting.
2. 10:30 [00:07] Planned out my backup and upgrade strategy including documenting all steps here. This will increase the installation time substantially, but will be worth it if something goes wrong.
3. 10:39 [00:16] Quit all applications except 1Password. I want to backup the most important data I have, so I export to an interchange format and run a keychain backup using the app’s built-in backup. Copy those files to another computer, upgrade its 1Password version, convert to the Agile keychain format and restore the keychain there. Seems to be fine.
4. 11:00 [00:37] Notice that Time Machine backed up the MacBook while I was writing this. Now do a Retrospect backup of all my other critical data to my web hosting provider.
5. 11:03 [00:40] Empty the trash, drag the unencrypted 1Password interchange file on the MacBook to the trash and use the Secure Empty Trash option
6. 11:06 [00:43] Turn off Time Machine backups and perform a Retrospect backup from the backup server to my MacBook as client. This will take a while because it has to scan the whole disk. Yes, I could just back up my data, but what about the preferences that some apps hide in /Library/Preferences? Better safe, than sorry, especially given my luck with Leopard.
7. 11:19 [00:56] While Retrospect is scanning, I decide to be extra safe and download SuperDuper! to clone my drive to another drive. I can use it for free so what can it hurt? I’ve never used this program before, so this should be interesting.

   Since I’ve instructed Retrospect to not backup non-essential files like movies, TV shows, and podcasts, but I would still like them available when I’m done, I’ll get that for free by cloning the drive. It’s also a lot faster than having Retrospect scan the whole drive again and backup over the network.

8. 11:27 [01:04] I’ve been thinking hard about all the pain and suffering it will be to wipe my drive and reinstall everything, but since Leopard’s been a royal PITA, I think that’s the best strategy. I’ll still restore my user settings because I don’t want to lose the mail and account information, calendars, etc. I’ll be able to use the backup information as a list of apps I’ll need to reinstall. This is also a good time to decide to ignore stuff I don’t use anymore.
9. 11:35 [01:12] It takes Retrospect 29 minutes to scan and match files to determine it needs to backup 1537 files occupying 228 MB and less than a minute to actually do the copying. Restoring even a single file from Retrospect can be equally painful, but it has other features that make it worthwhile. For day-to-day use I use Time Machine for quick restores.
10. 11:42 [01:21] Start the SuperDuper! clone. With the unregistered version I can only erase and copy, but that’s fine. I chose to Repair Permissions first. SuperDuper! reports 1.2 million files need to be copied. Yikes! It’s only copying from the internal drive to a FireWire 400 drive at a measly 8 MB/s. That’s awful! It will take over 4 hours to clone the 128 GB on the MacBook at that rate. FireWire 400 should be capable of about 30 MB/s. I wonder if Carbon Copy Cloner is any better.
11. 11:58 [01:37] I decide to abandon SuperDuper! as it is just too frickin’ slow. I have nothing to lose by trying Carbon Copy Cloner.

    I forgot that I still had a Previous Systems folder from the last time I tried an Archive and Install in a vain effort to get Leopard to behave. Trashed that so there should be fewer files to clone. There’s close to 100 k files, so this is going to take a while too given how slow the Finder is. It’s doing several per second, not several thousand or even several hundred — several per second. Groan!

12. 12:15 [01:54] Gave up on Carbon Copy Cloner too as it was only running at 12 MB/s.
13. 12:22 [01:59] I will rely on my Retrospect and Time Machine backups instead. But, I still want to copy over the files that I told TM and Retrospect to skip. I’ll copy them to the FW drive that I was going to use with SuperDuper. Using Finder, it’s copying at about 25 MB/s, much faster than SD or CCC.

    I should have copied the files I was ignoring in my backups, but wanted to preserve anyway, before I started this procedure. They don’t change very often so I would have saved about 35 minutes.

14. 13:05 [02:42] Rebooting into Snow Leopard to erase and install.
15. 13:11 [02:48] Select to install nearby and popular printer drivers, remove language translations and X11, add Rosetta and QuickTime 7. Forecasting 30 minute install, but I’ll be out running errands.
16. 17:13 [03:18] Elapsed time assumes Apple’s 30 minute install time was valid, which historically is far from the truth. Arrive home from errands to continue installation. I’m offered to restore from a Time Machine backup. However, my TM volume is on a shared network drive, which the installer doesn’t offer as an option. Just directly attached volumes or from a wireless network. Joining the network won’t allow me to see other computers. I have to skip this step. I’ll restore later using Migration Assistant.
17. 17:18 [03:23] Create an account of the same name as before. Select a picture for the account and ignore the MobileMe sales pitch.
18. 17:21 [03:26] Finally, the first problem shows up. Only the DVD volume is shown on the desktop. My Macintosh HD volumes is nowhere to be seen. Software Update runs automatically and finds an update for Remote Desktop Client. It does install it so there must be a hard drive somewhere. Ah, the Finder preference default is not to show hard disks on the Desktop. How strange. Set up the rest of the Finder preferences.
19. 17:25 [03:30] Tried to connect to the server that holds my Time Machine volume. Snow Leopard (SL) can see the server, but won’t show me any volumes even thought the account name and password are identical between the two machines. Click Connect as… and enter my password. Now I get a list of volumes. Hurray! They fixed the bug with column view not showing all the mount points and not offering a scroll bar. Now I have a scroll bar.
20. 17:28 [03:33] Mount the Time Machine volume and launch Migration Assistant. Choose the option to restore from Time Machine or another disk. It goes off and tries to find a list of disks. Thinking… thinking… thinking… I give up after three minutes. This is stupid. I’ll have to move the hard drive from the server to the MacBook. Fortunately, it’s an external Firewire volume. I should have to do this stuff. Leopard on the G5 server complains it can’t eject the Time Machine volume because it’s still in use … and then does it anyway. It disappears off the desktop, so I unplug it. Leopard complains that I removed a volume when I shouldn’t have. Sigh.
21. 17:37 [03:42] Oh, I see. Now that I moved the drive to the MacBook, it sees the G5′s volume. I have to mount the sparseimage volume for the MacBook. Not sure that would have helped since it was taking minutes to locate on a server volume and still couldn’t find it. Select the volume and tell it to restore Users, Settings, Other files, but not Applications. I’ll do that manually. It won’t proceed until it’s calculated all the files and space. I guess that’s reasonable. Even though I’ve unchecked Applications, it insists on calculating it anyway. That’s dumb but I can Continue.
22. 17:43 [03:48] However, I can’t restore over the account I’m using because it’s the same account. I have to create another temporary admin account. Grrr.
23. 17:45 [03:50] Create a new admin account, log off, log into the new account, run Migration Assistant again. Hmm, I just noticed that the Time Machine sparsebundle mounts without a password. That doesn’t seem right. Not too secure. Off it goes to calculate all the sizes again.
24. 18:45 [04:50] Restore completed, log out of temp account and back in to main account. Spotlight insists on indexing the Time Machine volume even though I added it to Spotlight’s privacy list. Another thing for Apple to fix in 10.6.1. Get it to stop by ejecting the volume, but I need it to see what apps to restore. So I remount it and the idiotic Spotlight hammers the disk to index it. Will Apple ever get Spotlight to work properly?
25. 18:54 [04:59] Start reinstalling applications. Wow, around 60 to install. I’ll try copying them over first, then try them out to see which ones complain about missing pieces, then reinstall those.
26. 19:05 [05:10] Time to break for supper, and I’m having company.
27. 20:00 [05:10] I won’t count the time I was at supper even though the copying was going on. Still completing application transfer. Tested a couple important ones like 1Password and Parallels. So far, so good.
28. 22:15 [05:30] Was interrupted by a long telephone call. The copying completed but complained there was a problem because I didn’t have the correct permissions. Looks like there will be some fixing to do. Launched Mail and it says it needs to import messages. Why? They should have been all restored.
29. 22:45 [06:00] Most applications test fine so far. FileMaker Pro 10 needs an update as Instant Web Publishing won’t start. Old Dreamweaver 8 has to be reinstalled. Had to reinstall a driver for my ancient Xante Accel-a-Writern 3N.
30. 23:03 [06:18] MS Office X and 2008 Excel both startup. No extended testing done. Crashed the Finder when I was opening a window on a remote volume. Had to reinstall Plaxo. Old Retrospect 6.0 had to have the files located for the backup sets. Had to reinstall the Retrospect Client.
31. 23:25 [06:40] Some applications did not restore properly from the Time Machine volume. Tried to connect TM to the original volume, but it thinks there are no backups. That’s very bad. Have to manually copy some applications that did not restore properly the first attempt. Not sure why. Seems to be going OK now.
32. 23:38 [06:53] The Logitech Control Center 3.0 is not compatible with Snow Leopard. Have to wait for an update. Calling it a night. I’ll continue tomorrow.
33. 08:44 [06:53] Day 2. I launched Mail and it disabled the Plaxo mail plug-in. No great loss. Given how often Plaxo has updated the client in the past, it could be a long wait.
34. 09:01 [07:08] Tried to play a track purchased on iTunes, which complained it was not authorized. I authorized and it then complained it was already authorized. Sheesh!
35. 09:04 [07:11] iTunes complains it can’t sync photos to my iPod Touch because it can’t find the library. It suggests I open iPhoto. But iPhoto won’t open. It was one of the apps I drag-installed. Time to get out the iLife installer.
36. 09:06 [07:13] I notice that the Favorites folder is no longer a heart, but a boring blue folder. I don’t heart that change.
37. 09:12 [07:19] Decide to install iLife ’09 from the installer rather than run the latest version of each app in case some common files need to be loaded first. Then I’ll update. A restart is required.
38. 09:14 [07:21] During restart, SL disables RetroClient and Timbuktu as the permissions are not correct. These are both very old programs, so this doesn’t surprise me, but I don’t want to pay the horrible amounts of money both of these programs now cost, and I don’t even know if they’re compatible.
39. 09:19 [07:26] iLife ’09 installer does not replace the newer versions of the app. Run Software Update and it just requires iLife Support 9.0.3 to be installed. iPhoto launches successfully.
40. 09:26 [07:34] Tried to sync Motorola Razr phone using iSync. Had to pair, but it would not communicate. Second time it worked. BlueTooth has got to be one of the flakiest protocols ever devised by man. I think it’s the product of a terrorist organization to sap productivity and saddle us with such lousy quality that it’s borderline useless.

    To further add to the fun, 61 sync conflicts between iCal and the phone were flagged. Why? I’ve synced before without a problem.

41. 09:30 [07:38] iTunes reports that four apps for the iPod Touch need updating. I choose to download all, but it then says, “The information on this page is outdated.” I click OK to refresh, but no information changes. Try again, fails again. Brilliant. I’m successful by updating one at a time.
42. 09:35 [07:43] Notice that Mail does not remember the sort column. I select Date, it switches to Subject when I relaunch it. Bad bug.
43. 09:39 [07:47] Time to do other stuff for awhile. Back later.
44. 10:44 [07:47] Back at it. I’ll do more testing later, but I want to reinstall Leopard (10.5) on the FireWire drive I used temporarily for backing up the non-essential data not done as part of my normal backup. This drive normally is connected to a G5 system, so it can’t run Snow Leopard. Then it will be my Retrospect volume for the server.
45. 10:52 [07:55] But wait, Leopard will not install because it isn’t formatted correctly. It wants GUID Partition Table, but that’s only for Intel machines. I need Apple Partition Map for the G5, so I cannot install Leopard on the FW drive unless I do it from a PPC machine. Why such a silly limitation? Now I have to take down the G5 file server to do the install there. Groan. Oh well, at least I can do the install off the DVD and then the combo updater and then maybe a few other small updates. It won’t take all day like a Windows install would.
46. 12:01 [09:04] Still installing latest updates on Firewire drive on G5. My Retrospect autobackup of critical data for my MacBook failed because Retrospect couldn’t find the folders. They’re there, but they don’t appear to be the same to Retrospect.
47. 14:46 [09:14] Back after a break. Reinstalled Dreamweaver 8 (yes, it is old, but it’s all I need).

I think I’ll leave off here and start to use Snow Leopard and give my impressions later. When I upgrade my other two laptops, I won’t go through the rigorous procedure here, but just ensure the backups are done and then install over top of the existing Leopard installation. Should go a lot faster.