Sane person's guide to upgrading to Jaguar
 

Here's one I'm not even sure where to post, so I'll start it here and see what happens. :p

Assuming that a person buys Jaguar on or about the 24th., what kind of an upgrade plan should be pursued?

There are certain 3rd party haxies which are bound to break, the resource format will probably change so that current themes wiil break, there's a new gcc so many of the open source compilations will need new makefiles or they will break, and perhaps some of the drivers wiil not functrion as is.

So my question to y'all is, how should we collectively prepare for and conduct this upgrade to minimize the problems we might encounter?

I'm a firm believer in prevention, as opposed to troubleshooting, so I intend to back up the system and start from scratch, adding in old items individually to verify what works and what breaks. I'll start (or add to) threads in this area to report on progress, while leaving specfic troubleshooting questions to the Help areas.

Maybe it would be a good idea to start a checklist about specific things to watch out for? What say ye?

I kinda figured I'd let y'all try it out first, give the shareware developers some lead time to Jag up their offerings, give Apple opportunity to squish some bugs. My little WallStreet isn't gonna take off like a scalded kittycat if I put Jaguar on it. I've gbot 10.1.5 behaving nicely and I'm in no hurry to toss spanners into the works.

I sure as hell ain't going there until I know that X-Assist, FruitMenu, Duality's Classic Platinum, QuicKeys, Launch Items X, Timbuktu, DAVE, WindowShade X, DefaultFolder X, SwitchPic, Fink + Fink Commander, XFree86, and MouseZoom are ready to go there with me.

(Although if Margi Systems releases a Jaguar-only driver for their Display-to-Go auxiliary monitor CardBus card, that could kinda make me rethink things a bit. I'm really really tired of being limited to a single screen on the old WallStreet under MacOS X)

For what it's worth, Jaguar (or at least the last dev build) runs significantly faster on my 233 G3 powerbook than 10.1.5 did. At least 25%, maybe 50% faster.

The only broken thing I've run across so far has been sendmail (not suprising)

Ahh, an opportunity to provide a service to the community. After backing everything up to a bootable FW drive, I'm just going to jump in and load up 10.2 into my existing system, watch what breaks, then reappear on this forum with the 'flotsam and jetsum report'. Wish me luck.

~Dennis

I'll be sitting on the sidelines with AHunter3. I haven't had OS X up and running long enough to even consider moving to Jaguar. I also make it my practice to avoid anything.0 because it's just not in my blood. There are others who truly enjoy the adventure. They can blaze the trail for me.

However, I think some kind of listing would be great to know what works and what doesn't work. It would be helpful to those of you who are making the move to Jag while giving those of us on the sidelines some way of determining when it's ready for us to make the move up.

Testing the waters here - latest dev 6C115. Installed over a mirrored version of my highly customized OS X 10.1.5 setup. Install went fine - over the top of this system. So far only minor glitches - in particular FruitMenu does not work, but MaxMenus works fine and offers similar functionality.

Here's a quick breakdown of what I have discovered so far:

BROKEN
----------
FruitMenu - works briefly, then crashes
Some CMM - not identified yet.
Tinker Tool - will not load
USB Overdrive - seemed to work at first
Codetek Virtual Desktop

WORKS
---------
Quickeys
MaxMenus
Windowshade
Default Folder (?)
TypeIt4Me

So far every app I tried worked beautifully (e.g. Eudora, Mozilla, BBEdit, etc). I did not try any of the new "iApps" as I do not have much need for them. Although I did try the iChat and it picked up everything for my AIM account from Proteus and connected right away - no settings necessary.

Of more concern to me - and this may be a byproduct of installing over a mirrored system. The Terminal/CLI seem extremely sluggish. Especially when authenticating (ala su or sudo). There seems to be a brief pause between each command and execution. For example - a simple LS in OS X 10.1.5 is instantaneous - in 10.2 you issue the cmd, there is a slight pause, the total number of files comes up, there is another slight pause, 10-20 items in the list may appear, another pause, etc. Hopefully this is just a fluke of the dev release and will be fixed - I live in the CLI world for the simple fact it is lightning fast. For me the pause are unacceptabe. In general - there does appear to be a noticeable speed bump on my aging G4/400 (AGP).

Of course - all the development tools are broken - so no compiling for the time being.

resolving the jaguar dilemma
 

earlier this morning i raised a similar issue on a fink thread:

"either one does a clean install, wiping out everything, then re-installing and re-compiling fink stuff - and this could take weeks, as the kde story implies - or one attempts update on top prexisiting installations, updating and correcting files and configurations on a case-by-case basis - and this, too, could take weeks, as the sendmail in 10.1.5 story implies."

(this almost makes me not want to install jaguar...)

i believe we should grab the first of the two horns - which i gather is craig's suggesetion - rebuilding our systems gradually one bit at a time (as it were). the experimental method is the best approach, with each new installation being subject to rigorous testing and discussion. then each one of us could report the results of the testing in a specially created jaguar forum in threads like "jaguar and sendmail," "jaguar and mysql," jaguar and french roast," etc.

of course, it would be really helpful to hear from developers who've been playing around w/jaguar for a while: what broke, and how?

i see someone anticipated my request...thanks bluhz

dm2243 - its is quite a dilemma. I never feel quit like my system is running as well after using a mirrored drive in OS X. Can't put my finger on it - just not right. On the other hand - I have been using OS X religously for over a year now. Since learning how to compile and install I have been going 'unix-crazy'. I could not even attempt to caclulate the 100's of hours spent customizing this system to work at the level it works at now - which suits my needs. I discovered Fink a little late so unfortunately a lot of my customization is embedded into the core folders (/usr/bin, etc. as opposed to /sw, etc.). My dilemma then - install over or make some feeble attempt at sorting out this mess of a machine that performs and meets my every needs and synching that stuff directly. My experience with partial syncs has been less that exemplary - so that leaves me pretty much in an install OVER mode.

I just wish I could get a simple list of what NOT to copy to a new system - ala Netinfo stuff, etc. I have asked that query on many a board and never really received a good straight answer. I believe it is within these files that should NEVER be copied to a mirrored install that I am seeing some performance and general issues within a mirrored drive that has then been updated to 10.2.

Amen to that. Personally, I believe less is more. I will backup the users folders and the applications--that's pretty much it. I will refrain from copying any old preference files to the new system, unless they are for an app that is running pristinely AND has a great deal of settings that I wouldn't want to reconfigure by hand. It is a fair amount of legwork to reinstall customized stuff such Unix related things, but I figure it's worth it to have a completely clean system. I guess it's harder for you, bluehz, considering all the Unix work you've done. I use fink almost exclusively and it will not be hard for me to start from scratch thanks to it (assuming fink is/becomes compatible with Jaguar).

Personally, I'm looking forward to Jaguar as an opportunity to reformat this hard drive and get a fresh system going. I'm willing to put in a couple hours to do it. Here's hoping I don't loose anything important in the process.

David

Thanks bluehz, for that start on a list. Was there anything which rendered the system unbootable or caused a panic?

I see that updates are starting to appear on VT to add 10.2 compatibility. Frank Vercruesse has updates for ASM in the works, and since he's one of the folks who figured out the menubar addition API in the first place that knowledge should make the rounds pretty quick.

broken, let's see here...

TinkerTool - won't load (already noted)
ClassicSpy.menu - runs just long enough for the icon to appear/disappear, then is gone
Apple Remote Desktop - admin app thinks it's not installed, client pref pane crashes system prefs

SnapzPro didn't work, but got updated
Carracho client used to quit unexpectedly after choosing "quit", that got updated today

That is all I have found so far. QT6 itself broke VLC, but that has been updated, as well.

As far as how I'm going to update, I did an "archive and install". That way, I had a clean system. I can re-create 10.1.5 from the backup if I have to. So, I just dove in.

Not being one of those with any flight time on the pre-release builds, I'm just going to keep asking questions.

What about contextual menu items? OSXVnc? Toast?

One additional thing to remember to backup is /Library/Application Support/.

I'll try to collate this stuff over the next few weeks, and produce a little PDF with the collected and edited info by about the 20th.

Craig - I had no problems booting whatsoever. I can say that the installer is a bit finicky about the disk it will install on. First time I tried it on my iBook 2001 - it showed no disks available even though I cleaned off a partition for it. Tried it on the G4, worked perfectly installing over 10.1.5. I didn't like the performance I was getting from that so I erased the volume on the G4 and went to install it again. Installer got into the install process and crapped out - something about disk problem. Note I just ran extensive testing and maintence on that disk so I know its fine. I rebooted into 10.1.5 again and ran Disk Utility to erase the partition again - attempted reinstall and it went fine.

I was rather impressed that the "install over" went so well - in terms of - it booted right up, recognized all my prefs, etc.

The reason I wiped and did a clean install was to see if the problems I was experiencing in the sluggish terminal were related. I can tell you that after a clean install - the terminal is working speedy as ever now.

I have managed to get MaxMenus running (I have to have some method of quickly accessing applications, etc!). At first it kept crashing - then I noticed it was only crashing when attempting to access menus with "Recent..." type menu items. Disabled all the Recent stuff in all the menus within MaxMenus and all is well now.

Now if I can just figure out how to get all my customizations from my 10.1.5 into the 10.2.....I miss my stuff :( If I were to do it all over again and go completely FINK oriented - would all my customizations be in that single /sw directory and ease transition next time? I don't know why - but I am not that fond of Fink....it does a great job and all...but I just don't feel like I am really getting my hands dirty and learning anything new as I do when I compile by hand. I guess I could get used to it if it aided system upgrades.

I haven't had any problems with Toast, or even Virtual PC! I was quite surprised that the only major application that I use that was broken was one written by Apple (ARD).

I have never been able to get Toast 5.1.4 to work on any system - always gives some sort of drive error. Have never had any problems normally.

Toast 5.1.3 - works great with both internal Plextor 12/10/24 and external QPS 24/10/32 in APS Firewire case.

Aging HP Scanjet "the tank" IIcx works with Vuescan and Adaptec SCSI 2906 (the cheapo)

Stuffit Deluxe 6.5 OK

FileMaker 6.0v2 OK

I can pretty much say I have not run into a straight app that would not run yet. Incompatibilities are more in the extensions, cmm, prefpanes, etc.

bluhz and saint - as long as you're doing Q & A, what about

• sendmail
• XDarwin
• other unix apps you care to mention

thanks

Thoroughly spoiled on external firewire drives and Carbon Copy Cloner, what I plan to do is back up the well-oiled machine that 10.1.5 is on my iMac and Pismo, completely trash most of the OS 9 stuff I've had gathering dust on my drives, then re-partition the two computers: each with three: one small one for Classic and a few OS 9 apps, one for my 10.1.5 system, and another with 10.1.5 that I'll install Jaguar over. I'll play around with Jaguar and see what works, what doesn't, having 10.1.5 to fall back on if needed. When Jag is working properly with all the apps I need, I'll repartition again, keeping one for the Classic set-up, and another for Jaguar. That 10.1.5 backup will remain on my firewire drive for some time to come, however.

How's that for playing all ends from the middle? ;)

actually I think I'll try both. First install over 10.1.5, see how it works, then do an erase install.:)
Cheer, pink

Phil and pink, you both seem like remarkably sane people! :D

Continuing my questions, what about hardware? I remember when 10.1.3 (I think) broke Lerk's MO drive, and we'd like to catch stuff like that early. So have there been any hardware issues intoduced, with printers, 3rd party mice or more exotic items that people have tried?