Ouch
Last night, for what seems like the first time in months, I decided to take some time for myself. For one night there would be no freelance, no overflow from the office, no side projects, no email, and certainly no feeds.
So what happens? In the middle of an overdue system update that I decided to run while preparing dinner the G5 crashes. !. No blue screen of death mind you, initially it was a minimally-traumatic experience. A semi-transparent grey shade pulled down over my desktop and the computer asked me in a number of different languages to hold down its power button to force a restart. “For you G5? Anything.”
But despite my kindness, apparently crashing while installing an update is a bad thing. Go figure. I think some important bits of the OS had yet to be installed when the crash occured and try as it might the pretty hunk of aerated metal couldn’t get past the OS X start-up window.
With my wits about me I tried a few standard Mac troubleshooting techniques with no luck before whipping out the FireWire cable, an external FireWire hard drive and my trusty iBook G4.
Using Target Disk mode, I mounted the G5’s hard drive on the iBook’s desktop and then daisy-chained the external drive through the G5. The iBook like a good little tugboat drew the boatloads of data from the G5 into the calmer waters of the external drive.
The rest of the night and some wee hours of the morning were spent wiping the G5’s drive (I’d been meaning to do this for a while now anyway), reinstalling and upgrading the OS, and then copying over my files and applications.
All’s well that ends well though. Now I have a fresh OS and a current back-up of all my files.
035 Comments
You probably deleted the index.html file I wrote.. In case you missed it…
“hacked by chinese”
Dan, sometimes you just make so little sense I feel the need to call you billy and just be done with it. (PS. “HTML is enabled” means links and simple formatting suckah.)
Not to start an argument on PC vs. Mac, but it seems like you had a classic PC problem on your Mac. Is it really true (I don’t own a Mac) that just like their slogan “Think Different”, Mac’s just “Crash Different”?
Ray, I think a more accurate representation is that while Macs very rarely crash, when they do crash, they crash hard. Of course, this was a crash during a system update, so it isn’t exactly suprising.
Nah, that’s a valid comment Ray. Except that in 4+ years of using OS X, I’ve seen this blue screen of death equivalent only twice. The only other time was my first day with the Public Beta of OS X—4+ years ago. And only this time did it completely hose the system. Less a victim of a classic PC problem than a victim of unfortunate coincidence.
Oh and word to the wary, the closest I can come to isolating a cause for this crash was mounting a disk image (from a trusted source) while the OS upgrade was occurring. Even if it can’t be blamed I’ll be sure to avoid doing that during subsequent updates.
Yeah, my Mac crashed once too, that sucked. :) But at least I got to see that friendly multi-lingual screen I’d only heard about.
At least with a Mac, if the worst does happen (which is rare), restoring all your applications is pretty much as simple as copying over your Applications directory from a backup. None of that registry nonsense or DLL hell. Heck, I still get a grin on my face every time I install an app by simply dragging and dropping its icon.
(Yes, I’m a recent PC-user-turned-Mac-geek, so sue me!)
I think the single most important thing for me was being able to copy my KeyChain file from my old home directory into the fresh one. Preferences can be reset but I don’t even remember the password to my own MT installation—nevermind my banking site, miscellaneous forums, Amazon, etc.
(I keep all my email on the iBook otherwise that would have been my first concern.)
I’m also relieved that all my AAC files from the iTunes Music Store were smart enough to recognize that this is the same machine they were previously authenticated on.
Quick thinking on the backup. I had to do something similar a while ago when my notebook failed (hardware). That’s why I always keep my old machines around! And that’s why I want at least a TB FireWire drive…
Meanwhile I just thought I’d throw in that I haven’t had a BSOD since I stopped using Win98 back about 3 years ago. Despite working in a technical role, I haven’t even seen one in over a year. These days I view the BSOD as a thing of the past.
Like Ray, I don’t want to start a thing (shut up, then!) but I figured that people out to know that such problems are much rarer these days. I always hear Mac users talking about BSODs (on Windows) and I haven’t heard a PC user mention it in years
Thanks Lachlan. I didn’t intend the BSOD reference as a “my Mac’s better than your PC” statement, but more as a familiar landmark for PC and Mac users alike when talking about the more elegant, modern handling of a massive OS failure.
Bummer man. In the future, if you hose your operating system, just boot from the Mac OSX install disk and do an “archive and re-install” making sure to check the box stating “preserve user and network settings” Doing this will replace the entire operating system and leave all your programs and files untouched. Good luck getting back up and running. ;-)
What you entountered was the renowned Kernel Panic. 99% of the time Kernel Panics happen because of hardware conflicts that affect the core system. I get them often when I turn off my secondary display while the computer is in the process of shutting down (bad habit). Whenever I run updates, I make sure I back up all my data and repair permissions before the update.
For sure, Shaun, I knew what you meant. Personally, I’d kind of like a “semi-transparent grey shade pulled down over my desktop” with a big ‘Shut down’ notice when things go wrong. These days with a PC you still have to go to the Task Manager, end the failed task or process and return. Then if that doesn’t work, it is the old hard manual reboot
Way too much button mashing and you have to know what to do, when it is working and when it is time to cut your losses and hit ‘Power’
It is much better than a BSOD, but it is still not where it needs to be in terms of usability
I’m laughing, but only because I just posted today about my personal debate on wether or not to buy a mac. Regardless of that, I feel your pain with the all night troubleshooting job.
Hey Shaun,
What you experienced was Kernel Panic and they have been all over the place with the recent 10.3.6 update. I myself experienced one on my powerbook. Mine however, recovered fine. The weird thing is that yours happened when you weren’t using it, because most people have been reporting that it has been happening when they were doing something in Safari, in my case, I was downloading a file.
The Kernel Panic happens in the optimization or pre-binding stage. Everything gets installed, but something doesn’t sit right in the pre-binding and it goes bunk. The weird thing is that most people have tried to go in and manually pre-bind it and it doesn’t help. Who knows?
The weird thing as well is that it hasn’t sparked enough for Apple to pull the update. I think they are afraid of pulling yet another update, but really, they need to get their shit together. Take a look at Apple’s discussion boards and they are chalk full of this problem as well as external firewire drives not mounting properly after the update.
Glad to hear that you were able to save everything and that you made it out okay. Good to hear from you.
Cheers
I’ve got to reinstall OS X on my Powermac soon, as it’s starting to get a bit cranky from all those point upgrades since 10.3 came out. It truly is an all-day event, and should never be started in the evening. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve foolishly started it at around 9pm, thinking “eh, it’ll be straightforward this time - install, shove some backup files around, done!” only to be still sat there at 4am. Grrr.
A friend lost all mouse and trouchpad functionality on his TiBook because of a crash during an OS update. Those things are dangerous!
I cleaned up my eMac and iBook last weekend. I too was feeling that it was becoming a bit sluggish. Because of all my fiddling, RendezVous didn’t work anymore on the eMac. And the iBook needed more OS space (I’ve got both computers set up with 2 partitions).
The iBook was finished after 12 hours. That was because it’s only a G3/366 and I had enabled “write zero’s” when formatting. The eMac was configured again after 4 hours.
The following steps are recommended when doing an OS update:
Vincent, how do you update prebinding (in layman’s terms) ?
Sam, if you want to do the lot via Terminal, it’s:
Oh my, you all guys are so geeky here B^D
I mean, reading the first paragraph I was expecting a post about something like having dinner with friends, or going to the cinema, or go clubbing, or even reading a book sitting in front of the fireplace… I didin’t imagine it was just another issue of “recovering from OS crashes” series… and g’damn, a full post and several comments following, and it’s all technical jerkery, not a single word from anyone about the pity of wasting in this way the very first chance in months to do something different!
Gosh, you’re just too addicted… :)
PS: Mr. Inman: “In the middle of an overdue system update that I decided to run while preparing dinner the G5 crashes.”… take note: it was your fault. Electronic machineriers fear loneliness, and are smart enough to sense when they are about to be left alone. DO NOT power on any of them, not even for a mundane task, if you are not willing to stay. They know a bunch of dirty tricks to make you to change your plans ;-)
This is in response to Lachlan’s comments about “I always hear Mac users talking about BSODs (on Windows) and I haven’t heard a PC user mention it in years.” I’m both a Mac and PC user (I know, I can’t believe such a person actually exists) and I think it’s just an excuse for some Mac people to get more PC people to switch. That’s not to say that Macs are better than PCs or PCs are better than Macs, they’re both good in their own right and neither is close to perfect, but the BSODs on Windows have been far and less seen since Windows 2000 and they started building off the NT platform which was way better than 95/98 OS. XP is not even close to being perfect, but it’s very stable compared to the old stuff. Sorry to hear about your Mac crashing Mr. Inman. I think if more people follow your example and buy an external hard drive, they’d be in good shape. They’re extremely handy, especially for computer techs like me.
Well, on the up side, you kept to your plan of not doing any freelance or any office work that evening!
Heartning isn’t it?
Well this ain’t bad. At least you didn’t loose all your data and fried two hard drives, totalling 200GB’s., and loosing around 100GB of data. And this wasn’t actually porn, mp3 or movies, but work related stuff. And stupid me, didn’t check if the backup is running properly in a very long time, so nothing recent was backed up. Man oh man, was I kicking myself in the back for a while…
Very much so Akaxaka. What’s disheartening is the increase in people calling me Mr. Inman. What’s up with that?
(PS: Can we really leave the Mac/PC debate out of this please? )
I had a similar experience too. Like most of you, I backup regularly to an external HD. Upon re-installing everything and copying my data back, I was horrified to find I could no longer access my old email messages through apple’s mail app.
The files were all there, but permissions couldn’t be reset. Apparently I used a different login and password when I re-installed. Arghh!
As long as Mr. Inman didn’t lose the latest version of the new ShortStat, we can all breathe a sigh of relief [, he said, selfishly.]
Haha, that’s weird because I, too, crashed during the update to 10.3.6 while attempting to load a disk image. In my case, however, the update had already finished and I simply had not yet restarted. I was able to reboot without any major damage.
After what I said earlier, I can’t believe I’m seriously thinking about doing a total reinstall… at 11:15pm!
Shaun, for what concerns my part in the “Mr.” thing…
Sorry, I didn’t mean to bug you. I read your blog quite often, but that was the first time I posted a comment, and I felt I hadn’t enough intimacy to address you by first name. “Inman” alone sounded strange to me, so I added that “Mr.” just for joking. I’ll avoid that in the future, I promise :)
Cheers
ps: and, oh, I also promise to restrain from commenting if I haven’t anything relevant to add to the discussion, apart from some poor humour ;)
Here is a quick fix if you have 2 Macs on hand. Target firewire the dead Mac. Plug into your secondary Mac. Download the combined 10.3.6 update directly from the Apple site, not from the software update mechanism. Run the update and choose the dead Mac to install on. It will reinstall the update, repairing anything that was half written to the disk, as well as anything else that hadn’t been completed from the update. Repair permissions. Reboot.
Ricardo - It’s Mrs. Inmann, didn’t you know?
No, but seriously, it’s basicly just a sign that people respect your authority. Stuff like shortstat and sIFR does give you a lot of credit in the ‘community’ (how ever loose that comunity actually is). So it’s nothing to worry about really, but I guess it just makes you feel all old and stuff.
Thank you Phil for the terminal tip. I asked because my iBook also crashed while updating 10.3.6. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to to get it to pass boot screen ever since. Typing the 4 lines you provided didn’t seem to have any effect. And since I’m still a PC user recently converted, I don’t know how to use the console at all. So next I’m gonna try Byron’s fix…
Sam, you will definitely have to use the Firewire Target Mode and update the computer that way.
There’s a nice article on MacWorld where they explain what the 10.3.6 update does. Apparently, it updates half the OS. Too bad Apple didn’t tell us about that…
You may or you may not use Bit Torrent, but running Azureus 2.2.0.0 in OS X will cause Kernel Panics every time you use it.