Apple Leopard OS Install Problems Reported.

[JohnDotCom]

Leopard users fall prey of install problems

A significant number of Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard upgraders report 'blue' and 'grey screens,' plus system failures and advise backing up or archiving data first if upgrading an existing install.



http://www.itpro.co.uk/picture_library/dir_139/it_portal_pic_69821_t.jpg A significant number of Apple (http://www.apple.com/) Mac owners upgrading to OS X 10.5 Leopard (http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx) over the weekend reported hours-long system freezes or total shut down, accompanied by the infamous PC 'blue screen of death'.
Within hours of the new operating system's debut, Apple's Installation and Setup forums (http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1219&start=0) were flooded with posts from users having trouble with their new copies of Leopard.
One user named Doug Mcilvain said: "I have re-installed and it [Leopard] has been sitting there with a blue screen for four-and-a-half hours. Not good."
Other users including pbella who logged an Apple bug, report number 5563474, complained of a 'grey screen': "After successfully surviving the Leopard betas, the final release has (at least temporarily) bricked my PB [PowerBook] G4 1.67 (it locked up shortly after a full install, not upgrade, and I now get a grey screen of death on boot)..."
All of the users followed the advice given in the Leopard preview on Apple's website and manual and chose 'upgrade' installation option, which it warned could take a couple of hours and would protect users' data (http://www.itpro.co.uk/news/133721/leopard-users-fall-prey-of-install-problems.html#) while updating the operating system in the background.
But many reported that, re-booting and re-starting the process after selecting the alternate 'archive and install' or 'clean install' options was successful.
One advised users to backup data before attempting an installation, while others said they had received a variety of different advice from Apple support, ranging from re-booting and re-installing Leopard, to taking their systems into an Apple store to have "data recovered and start over".
While most, whose systems varied from the new Intel-based Macs to older ones, expressed anger or concern over the glitch, a number speculated as to the cause. The most popular has been the suggestion that uninstalling the application enhancer (APE) framework from vendor Unsanity (http://www.unsanity.com/) would allow Leopard to install.
A user identified as Chris Mcculloh posted Unix command code to speed the restart, which quickly spread through the forums. And some reported success after following his instructions, although he advised the solution was not for the "faint of heart or those unfamiliar with the Unix file system/command structure".
But Unsanity hit back over the weekend, pouring cold water over suggestions its APE was to blame. It did, however, add a compatibility note to its website home page and email mailing list members saying: "Please make sure you have APE 2.0.3 or later installed before you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5." Older versions may be affected it seems, but those running post-Intel Macs should not, it said.
Allan King, a PowerBook G4 user who had befallen the 'grey screen' problems speculated: "It may be that they are not Leopard upgradeable for firmware or hardware reasons. Apple should have done this research before release," he wrote.
Apple had not responded to a request for comment at time of writing.

Copied with permissions granted.

[GreyGhost]

Just installed here on my backup drive which already had Tiger installed, So this was an upgrade not a clean install.
Absolutely seamless and trouble free. I would suggest the issues described are in point of fact in the first cases due to third party softwares. Particularly those from Unsanity where system issues have in the past been well documented. The APE update that they recommend is still not proven to be worthy of a pass IMO
As with any Operating system installing shareware and freeware system extensions is fraught with dangers and I as a professional consultant will always advise my clients not to do so or at their own risk.

Issues of possible firmware update issues has not been documented, I will have to look into this or wait until Apple issue updates.

My personal recommendation would be to perform a clean install, make sure it is operational and then migrate essential data and applications.
The average user is not going to undertake this, but that may indeed provide me with a lucrative income over the next few months.

Edit. There were two minor software updates for the system after installing from the Apple software download site.

[BMC123]

see? I told you PC's and Macs were almost twins now :D

One question though, why on earth would anybody want to sit and look at a blue screen for 4 1/2 hours? at least a PC user would know something was wrong and switch it off. (at least most of them would) :o

[Zeb]

You know what they say.....

It only takes one bad Apple....:fishslap::getmecoat:

[JohnDotCom]

I have done my First clean Install and its all working fine,
So this Apple is not bad or rotten. http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif
On a Intel powered Core 2 Duo as well.

[salop75]

Upgraded my macbook to Leopard with no problems and have been hammering it ever since, uptime of 5days now, memory usage at near max and tons of applications spread over 6 'spaces', so far i'm very pleased with the stability in the latest leopard build. The only issue so far has been PubSubAgent occasionally throwing a fit, oh and X11 is broken :( all in all not bad. Funny thing is even Entourage has been behaving itself.

Also installed on an old 800mhz ibook, works a treat. Installed on a upgraded DA powermac, upgraded to 1.6ghz, sata drives, max ram and Leopard simply halts after about ten minutes, nothing in the logs, completely unresponsive, so until i have time to look at it closer i just switched it back to Tiger - odd thing is the installer was happy with the system specs, yet i hear of others with cpus above the 867mhz threshold on powermacs where the installer claims the hardware isnt appropriate.

Looking forward to 10.5.1 and some full ZFS support.

[GreyGhost]

Now installed on main drive. No problems at all, arguably faster and smoother than Tiger IMV.
PubSubAgent threw a couple of hissy fits but no further alerts. haven't tested X11 yet but I will now. :)

No probs with X11, perhaps a reinstall will fix it for you?

[salop75]

Seem to be general X11 issues that Apple have acknowledged. Some discussion here: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=418978

Luckily i can do without X11, although its nice to have.

[GreyGhost]

Fortunately most of us mere mortals have little use for X11. I have only tested the terminal window called by X11.app and not any application. It can be dragged around spaces successfully. I have just sussed you can re-order spaces by dragging, missed that in the blurb. :D

To be honest I only ever used it with early versions of Open Office. No longer required since Neo arrived.

[Manxmann]

2 out off 3 here.

Both my MacBook Pro and Intel Mini upgraded without problems.

My trusty old MDD was not so lucky, however this wan't the Blue/Grey screen of death, in this instance the finder would simply not start. Clean install solved this.

The only problems I've had are as follows:

Cord - Microsoft RDP client, has serious display glitches, supposedly fixed with an update but still present. Moving to the new MS RDP Client v2 beta from Microsoft, which is universal! was a workaround.

MacFuse + SSHFS - Both install and run however no file system is ever mounted, more of a problem as I've come to depend on this.

Leopard is much quicker than Tiger on the MDD without a doubt, now all I need is to find a cheap Radeon 9700/9800 to get core animation running!

[salop75]

Had some time today to re-install Leopard on the G4 from scratch rather than as an upgrade. Seems a lot happier, no more halting after ten minutes. Really hammered the cpu by letting spotlight run its initial indexing while installing iLife/iWork and watching Top-Gear re-runs on "Dave" on EyeTV. And i can report everything is fine.

Except for after a reboot the audio goes choppy in EyeTV - strange, a quick look in the System Preferences shows the Audio panel showing the iSub device, then its not there, then it is, ad infinitum. Unplugging brings the audio back on as normal through the pro speakers minus the iSub. Seeing as the iSub is meant to be officially supported hardware i'll raise a fault with Apple.

After two weeks of using Leopard i've come across a few bugs, so looking forward to 10.5.1.

Anyone here found any interesting bugs yet?

[Simon]

Although not yet an owner of an Apple Mac, I'm reading all information regarding Leopard and Macs in general with great interest.

Seemingly there are problems (as with anything) but I've yet to come accross series of webpages reporting hundreds of problems, incompatibility issues etc that as a Windows user I have become acustomed too. So - I ask - are these initial install problems just minor teething problems of the new OS and will be ironed out in due course or do these sort of problems occur all the time and would therefore burst Apples bubble of "It just works"...?

[salop75]

Although not yet an owner of an Apple Mac, I'm reading all information regarding Leopard and Macs in general with great interest.

Seemingly there are problems (as with anything) but I've yet to come accross series of webpages reporting hundreds of problems, incompatibility issues etc that as a Windows user I have become acustomed too. So - I ask - are these initial install problems just minor teething problems of the new OS and will be ironed out in due course or do these sort of problems occur all the time and would therefore burst Apples bubble of "It just works"...?

Well the truth is that Apple users tend to get quite passionate about Apple hardware and software so tend to create the impression that Apple kit and OS X are perfect, perpetuating the "it just works" fable. All computers and their software suffer problems, as long as humans are in the loop they always will.

In m experience, in general use, Apple "just works - more often than alternative operating systems/platforms". It's easier for Apple, they own the hardware, they only support a minor set of hardware drivers, they keep tight control over the programming standards(in theory), whereas Microsoft have the problem of supporting thousands of drivers and poorly written software that ignores their standards. For example under XP a simple memory allocation function has to have extra code to make allowances for hundreds of badly written applications that don't allocate memory in accordance to the standard set by microsoft, this greatly complicates the base operating system. Why do MS do this, because people blame MS whenever any software goes wrong and because the developers are lazy and don't fix their code.

I recommend Mac's especially as second machines for existing PC owners, because it gives you choice, run OS X, or run Microsoft XP/Vista, or even Linux, theres a lot of flexibility.

If you can, get to an Apple store or find a friend with an Apple and have a play, you will be pleasantly surprised with the ease of use and thought that has gone into the user experience.

But Apple do get things wrong, and sometime like MS overlook minor issues, but generally issues such as those that are cropping up since the rollout of Leopard are fixed fairly quickly - very quickly when compared to MS.

[Simon]

Thanks for your input Salop. I managed to have a play (two hours worth in total :o ) earlier this week at an Apple store. I got talking with the shop people and asked them all sorts of questions I had and I found that I was extremely impressed with both Leopard and the iMac I was playing with.

I believe a Mac will do everything that my PC currently does for me - and in most cases will do it even better. The one question I can't seem to find an answer to is the audio output capabiltites of the new iMac's. The rated digital optical output through S/PDIF TOSLink according to Apple's website is 24-Bit but I can't find much in the way of supportive evidence for this. For example, on my Soundblaster preferences on my PC I can set it to either 16-Bit or 24-Bit output but I can't seem to find any documentation relating to similar on the iMac. Does anyone know if the iMac is natively 24-Bit output via the S/PDIF TOSLink...? :confused:

[salop75]

Well the input sampling rate is effectively set by the device sending the digital audio, as for the output i'd guess (as i don't know) that its as simple a setting the output rate in the software application.

This might be of use: http://devworld.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Developer_Notes/Macintosh_CPUs-G5/iMacG5_May05/03_Input-Output/chapter_4_section_15.html

Although this refers to the G5 cpu model imacs, the underlying interaction of the hardware must be similar if not the same as the current intel iMacs as the functionality is effectively in the Core Audio framework.

Hope this helps.

[BMC123]

Not sure what you want to do? but we never use any onboard sound on any of our computers (Mac or PC) in the studio, everything runs through pro tools and external M-audio gear

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.main&ID=9651226c4dacf85d4d6a5377d29c4eb5

[GreyGhost]

Simon

You should find any and all information you require here:-
http://images.apple.com/support/

Type in you search then on the results page select technical documents or whichever section you require.