Not resolved: Complete Time Machine crash in 10.6.1

With any way to handle information, mistakes crop up.  Just play "telephone" (whispering a message from person to person) with any group, and you'll see that the message that reaches the last person is wildly different from the message that started out.  So it's really no surprise when backups crash.

What is surprising in this case, however, is that thus far, there seems to be no way of tracking down why it crashed, and how to repair the damage.  Spoiler alert: in the end, I simply decided that the backups going back a little over two months were not valuable enough to keep trying, and I wiped the image they were on, and started a new backup from scratch.  This does not mean the problem is solved, just that it was circumvented with losses I decided were acceptable.

How it happened: Well, I was using my 10.6.1 system as normal.  I was running Growl 1.2b4, which I had heard from some quarters could interact weirdly with Time Machine (old versions of Growl, with old versions of Time Machine).  At some point, I'm sure I shut down the computer in the middle of an over-the-wireless-network backup (to a .sparseimage, not on a Time Capsule, but a third-party drive connected to an Airport Extreme base station), which has never created a problem before.

But somewhere after some such shutdown in the middle of a backup (is this the cause?), the .sparseimage simply would not mount for Time Machine to backup, failing and "delaying" that backup attempt.

So I tried to open the .sparseimage in Disk Utility.  It hung for quite a bit, but finally told me I couldn't (unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to copy down the error message).  So I disconnected the drive from the Airport Extreme and connected it directly via Firewire 800.  This time, the icon changed to the same as a different user's folder, which you don't have access to (a folder icon with a red/white "no access"-style circular symbol over it).  Attempting to do anything with it just resulted in being told that I didn't have privileges to access it, but oddly didn't provide any place at all where I could have entered an admin password (possibly because the only password with access to it would have been the root password, and the OS is constructed such that the only way to enter that is via the Install DVD, if the computer has a root password set at all.  It's big juju to mess with anything that requires a root password!).

So I gave up, and trashed the apparently corrupted .sparseimage, then created a completely new Time Machine backup for the drive.  The only way in which it seems to function differently (other than only having backups starting from the new date) is that the backup name is now "Time Machine Backups", rather than the "Backup of [My computer's name]" as it had been, since Leopard.

I was sad to see the old backups go, but anything that I've needed to restore from backup (to my knowledge) has already been restored.  An added bonus is that I reclaimed quite a lot of disk space.  Still, it would have been nice never to have had to trash the old backup, and restart a new one.  Does anyone out there have similar experiences, and any suggestions I might not have tried?

There is no end to the geekiness: Printing oddness on 10.6/.1

So in the past, I had a printing difficulty on 10.5.8, which was that I got a kernel panic when printing something from an Adobe app over the network from my laptop to an iMac sharing its Epson printer. Once I started the laptop back up from its kernel panic, prints from Adobe apps continued to function normally, but anything else printed from the laptop had to be while the laptop was physically connected to the printer via USB. The job simply wouldn't send from the laptop to the printer@the iMac at all, giving me a dialog in the print queue which cited a glitch in some printer library file so deep in the innards of the system that I honestly can't remember the path.

Apple couldn't help, either on forums or via AppleCare phone line. Epson couldn't help. So I backed up, downloaded the 10.5.8 Combo updater (I had been using Delta updaters through most of Leopard*), and installed over my current system, hoping that would overwrite whatever bad juju was happening with the print library file, and clear up the troubles.

Lo and behold, it did. Printing from any app over the network to the printer@the iMac worked just fine.

So since correcting the 10.5.8 printing problem, I've installed Snow Leopard and then, 10.6.1 on the laptop. The iMac can't take Snow Leopard: it's a last-generation iSight G5 (I tell ya, I was kickin' myself a couple months after buying that, except that in retrospect, the first generation Intel Core Duos wouldn't be able to support 64-bit in Snow Leopard, either).

Somewhere along the way between 10.6 and 10.6.1 (which, from a troubleshooting perspective, is a wide swath of uselessness, but I'm just reporting how memory serves), I found that network printing from the laptop didn't work again This time, however, given the message in the print queue, the reason was apparently different (unless someone at Apple had simply chosen to re-write the cryptic dialog into something very slightly less opaque). Now the printer queue was being paused, whenever a job was sent to it. Every time, paused, repeatedly, over and over.

I seem to remember once when I was able to go to the iMac, found the job in the print queue, and resumed the print queue, successfully printing the job. This of course, required more interaction with the iMac than simply picking up the printed pages from the printer. But in those instances, it was a ham-fisted way to eventually get the same result (ie., walk downstairs to where the iMac and printer sit together, and get the print).

But at least since installing 10.6.1 (another instance of "I'm not sure when," which throws things off), the job never even seems to show up in the iMac's print queue, and resuming the laptop's print queue simply makes it immediately pause it again.

I tried deleting and re-installing the laptop's print queue. Other than changing the printer icon back from the generic icon Snow Leopard gave me on original install, to the one specific to the printer's make/model, this didn't accomplish anything: still no network printing due to an immediate and persistent pause to the queue when jobs were sent to, or present in, the queue.

So I did a Google search with the non-quoted (because including the quotes will make Google think you want the words in that specific order), "printer paused 10.6". I came up with this page, which provided various things to try. The first "Answer" is the one which worked for me, but a caveat: it will delete all your current print queues!

Basically, go to the Print & Fax pane in System Preferences, option-click on the list of print queues, and select "Restart printing system" from the contextual menu which pops up. If you can deal with the caveat above, and losing your pretty printer-specific icon in favor of the generic one Snow Leopard gives you, then you may be in network printing business! I know I am (for now).

Of course, your mileage may vary, depending on your specific printing symptoms and the root cause (correctly communicated to you by the system in a dialog box, or not). If you're still not in business after trying this solution, you may wish to try others on the page to which I link above. If none of those work, you may even want to try the semi-drastic† approach of downloading the Snow Leopard Combo update (though as a write this, there is no such thing, because only the 10.6.1 update has been released, and there is no difference between a Combo or a Delta update for the first one after a major release), and re-install that.

* For those who may be unaware, a "Delta" update simply updates your system from whatever it is, to the next iteration (which in Mac OS X, is like 10.x.1 to 10.x.2, or 10.x.2 to 10.x.3, etc., but never 10.5 to 10.6, because you do need to purchase a DVD for that, which cheap as it may be this time around, is a whole 'nother kettle of fish). By contrast, a "Combo" update brings together ALL of the updates from 10.x.0 through whatever version you're at (in the above example, the Leopard Combo updater re-installed all the most current updates for 10.5, through 10.5.8). A Combo update is a bigger download because it has more data over several versions to update, and you have to find and select the Combo updater for download manually from here, but it's also a better way to squash bugs which might have cropped up from one Delta update to the next.

† As in, not fully drastic, which is wiping your system and re-installing it all from scratch, avoiding even using as much of your old user data as possible, as some of it might again corrupt the printing system. I would recommend avoiding this fully drastic approach if you at all possibly can, because even though you have backups (you do, don't you?), accessing and using those backups from a former user will always be a convoluted system for whatever you're doing, at best. If nothing else besides this option lets you function how you want to, then I urge you to weigh the hassle of having to find another printing solution (like connecting directly via USB, if that still works) versus having to kludge a way to get back to the data in your old user account whenever you need it (not covered here; do-able, but a pain in the tuckus).

In any event, good luck, and I hope my solutions help others, either directly or by educating!

Geekiness galore: Same startup behavior on 10.6.1

Testing using the same steps on 10.6.1 yields the same result as discussed in my 9/4/09 post (including the fact that the workaround to boot from 10.5.8 functions correctly).

Just riffin' here, but could the fact that Rosetta isn't installed by default in Snow Leopard have anything to do with the legacy QuickDraw imaging that the Hardware Diagnostic uses? Probably not, as QuickDraw is a legacy OS9 technology (originally designed for 680x0 & PowerPC chips, though a ROM or firmware kludge obviously makes it run on Intel for the Hardware Diagnostic, at least when booting from a 10.5.x volume), whereas Rosetta is a run-time PowerPC to Intel interpreter. But just a thought.

In any event, I haven't tested by installing Rosetta (no need to have extra code on the HD or in RAM/using processor cycles when I have no other PowerPC apps I really need to run). But if anyone would like to test with Rosetta, I'd love to hear the result.

So Apple didn't address no Hardware Diagnostic in 10.6.1. Maybe in 10.6.2?

More geekiness: Interesting startup behavior of Snow Leopard, with external boot drive and hardware diagnostics

Here’s an interesting startup behavior I’ve noticed on my June 2009 15” Macbook Pro (more model information available on request) since upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):

1) Holding down the Option key on startup, as always, offers choices of bootable drives to boot from. What is new is that the icon representing the computer’s main internal hard drive is given the name “EFI Boot”, in a non-anti-aliased (pixilated) font. That is, until AFTER the process listed below is complete, upon which time its name and font anti-aliasing of that name are restored.

2) Holding down the D key upon startup under Mac OS X 10.5.7 and 10.5.8 (unknown for previous versions, as this MBP doesn’t run them) boots the computer into Hardware Diagnostic mode. But under Mac OS X 10.6, it spends a long time with a grey screen (while the case gets hot and the fans run as if there is high processor load) for several seconds, until dumping to a grey Apple logo and progress spinner, then starting up “normally” (but not as selected).

Interestingly, if I connect an external bootable drive with 10.5.8 on it, select that external boot drive from the Startup Disk preference pane in System Preferences, and then hold down the D key upon startup, it then properly enters Hardware Diagnostic mode.

So it works, it just takes a work-around. Noteably, however, this is a work-around which may or may not effectively function if the internal drive actually has a problem booting up (when the user would actually need it, among other utilities). Perhaps Apple should consider addressing it for 10.6.1, as I know they’re already circulating developer releases.

YASLR (Yet Another Snow Leopard Review)

So my Up-to-Date copy of Snow Leopard which I preordered back in July, and was informed of its shipment on release day, August 28th. It was supposed to be delivered on September 2nd, but happily showed up on August 31st. And since it's not like I've had anything else to do, I decided to post a review here.

Of course, like many, I read several professional reviews, consulted several resources, and backed up, repaired permissions, and checked the disk before installation. Links to the online resources I mention include clickable links.

As many of the professional reviews mention, the installer for Snow Leopard is different, most noticeably in that it allows you to at least start up the Installer app before reboot. Being a cautious traditionalist, I manually started from the Installer DVD (by holding down C as I booted up) and ran Disk Utility before starting the Installer app, as traditional before this release, also from the Installer DVD. Installation took about 45 minutes, but then the machine crashed while automatically restarting (before the restart happened), giving me a dialogue offering the chance to save a crash report, shut down, or restart.

Once I restarted, the machine started up from the new 10.6 System Folder, but I was a little leery about the crash. So I re-inserted the DVD and clicked on the Installer app as it had originally wanted me to do. Installation then came off without a hitch.

Once up and running, other than a few 3rd party programs that I had known going in were not yet compatible, everything worked generally as well as the 10.5.8 installation I had just installed over. In Safari did I see a few cosmetic rendering irregularities on banner ads, and one crash of the Flash plug-in (which I was happy to see as advertised, did not cause Safari itself to crash). I followed the instructions to report the crash to Apple, and hopefully it will be addressed in or before 10.6.1.

I have also had a few instances, in the Finder, of non-response to clicks on icons or buttons. Almost always, clicking later on the same icon or button worked. It's admittedly possible that it's user error with the clickable trackpad, but at least subjectively, 10.5.8 seemed to do what I wanted to do with trackpad clicks more than 10.6 seems to. Hopefully this can be addressed in a subsequent version, but it's currently spotty to reproduce, and of course it doesn't crash anything, so there's no crash log to submit.

I also get a consistent bug where a Dashboard widget I know not to work on Snow Leopard (and have manually removed) keeps getting loaded (apparently by MobileMe sync, as it's on a synced 10.5 computer) and crashing, even though I never get a MobileMe sync dialog telling me of the change, just a crash notification with the Ignore or Send Bug Report to Apple buttons. Maybe I should just manually removed them one more time, then make this computer the master to sync from (thus removing the widget from the other computer, but at least it would stop crashing on this one).

In general, Snow Leopard seems to range subjectively from at least as stable and bug-free as, to considerably more stable and bug-free than, x.0 releases of Mac OS X in the past.

The few visual and organizational changes to the overall Mac OS X interface seem to be what they're sold as: refinements. In my estimation, it's a good idea to link Exposé to the Dock, grid-view of Stacks (at the very least) should be scrollable and clickable down to the next level (although now that I think of it, there were a few instances of the click happening, and the grid disappearing, only to have me need to drill down again on my next click on the Stack), and there's no particular problem with renaming the International preference pane as Language and Text, or separating out Keyboard and Mouse preference panes.

With regard to performance, it did take me some tinkering to figure out how to turn on the more powerful of the two GPUs (finally realizing, no thanks to any forums or other such posts online, that it was inside the Energy Saver preference pane, in the form of the Graphics toggle for "Better battery life" or "Higher performance"). Having done that, I could then run a benchmark test of the OpenCL performance of the active GPU against the CPU. These benchmarks were within the bounds of other users who had posted their results. Also, my Geekbench results tended to be about 2% better overall than under 10.5.8, whether the 64-bit kernel was loaded or not, whether "Higher performance" graphics were selected or not.

Real-world performance has been essentially the same as 10.5.8, as I haven't been crunching any real numbers. I ran a game demo or two, and while the fans went as crazy as I've ever heard them, the performance at any level of rendering (even maxed out) was exemplary: beautiful with no skips or weird textures at all. Better, actually, than the limited problems I experienced with Safari after the update.

Quicktime X is good, in terms of how easy it is to make iSight and Screen Recordings. I did have to switch to Quicktime 7 Pro to run an older .asx file (via Flip4Mac, probably as Quicktime X doesn't load any plugins at all).

All in all, a good update. $9.95 for Up-to-Date was better than $29 for the full purchase price, in terms of the limited changes to the interface. But I've drunk the Kool-Aid (in part by my own testing, or at least ability to test) that the changes under the hood set a great foundation for the future.