My Mac thinks Tiger is Leopard!

[David Bourke]

I have a FW drive divided into three partitions which I use for maintenance and repair with three different Macs. The first partition is named "Leopard," the second "Tiger," and the third "MacOS9." "Leopard" has 10.5.3 cloned from my iMac, "Tiger" has 10.4.11 cloned from my MacPro, and "MacOS9" has Mac OS 9 cloned from my G4. Each volume has the appropriate versions of DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro for each system installed (Norton SystemWorks for Mac OS 9).

This evening I connected the FW drive to the Mac Pro, chose the "Tiger" volume in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, and restarted. The machine booted using the "Leopard" volume. I restarted, checked that "Tiger" was indeed selected, and tried again. Same result – I got the Leopard login window every time, with the Mac name set to "Dave's iMac (2)."

Here's what I've tried/found so far:

1. Finder: I can navigate through the "Tiger" file system and open files on it no problem.

2. DiskWarrior: Rebuilt "Tiger" directory, ran "Repair Permissions" and "Check All Files & Folders" – DW reported that the owner of "." was 99 and should be 0, and that the group was also changed. These repairs made no difference.

3. TechTool Pro 4: Ran all checks on "Tiger" – no problems found.

4. Disk Utility: Ran "Verify Disk" – no problems. Checked info for "Tiger" and for "Leopard" – both volumes have different Disk Identifiers ("Leopard" is "disk4s10" and "Tiger" is "disk4s14"), and both have different Universal Unique Identifiers. Also repaired permissions for the Mac Pro's boot drive – no difference.

5. Get Info: Enabled "Ignore permissions on this volume" for "Tiger" – no difference.

6. Option key startup: Choosing "Tiger" booted me into "Leopard." Choosing "Leopard" also booted me into "Leopard." Mac name is "Dave's iMac (2)" in both cases."

7. Safe Boot: no difference.

8. Cold Boot: no difference.

I have to give up. I've run out of ideas and I don't know where else to look. There's no point in making a new clone since it will include whatever corrupted setting on the Mac Pro is causing this error.

Thanks for reading this far. Can anyone help please?

[baf]

Question has this worked before?

[David Bourke]

Yes. Initially, I had 10.5.2 on "Leopard." When I updated to 10.5.3 on the iMac, I then recloned to the same "Leopard" partition. However, CCC 3.1 did not appear to work properly under 10.5.3 – I could select only source and target disks, not drill down into the file system or select filters, and my trial clone stalled at /usr. So I used SuperDuper! instead.

I'm so used to working like this that I didn't bother to check until last night. And found this baffling problem.

[baf]

If I read you correctly then this clone has never worked.

I would suggest that you check "man bless" I think that's what's needed.
Good luck.

[David Bourke]

Thanks for your help, sir.

Just to be clear: the "Tiger" clone (made with CCC) has been working fine up to now to boot my Mac Pro. The "Leopard" clone (made with SuperDuper!) also worked to boot my iMac. The problem of the Mac Pro not booting into "Tiger" only arose since I recloned the iMac's 10.5.3 updated system to "Leopard" using SuperDuper! instead of CCC. So I don't know whether the problem lies with 10.5.3 itself or with SuperDuper!

However, I've just erased "Leopard" and the "Tiger" volume suddenly works fine again to boot my Mac Pro. I'll now have to rethink my strategy for cloning this iMac so it doesn't interfere with my Mac Pro.

I need this clone not just for maintenance but because Time Machine, after restoring a drive backed up to my Time Capsule, immediately sets about backing up once again the entire disk it has just restored. Obviously, this behaviour will fill up the TC's drive very quickly if many restores have to be performed, so having a clone obviates this.

Thanks for your time and attention.

[baf]

Well all this is guesswork but I think you should be able to first clone the computers and then make them bootable with bless. I have not tested it myself as I dont have several systems.

[ganbustein]

Quote: Originally Posted by David Bourke I need this clone not just for maintenance but because Time Machine, after restoring a drive backed up to my Time Capsule, immediately sets about backing up once again the entire disk it has just restored.

Are you sure about that? As soon as I got my hands on Leopard I ran a bunch of tests on Time Machine (partly because I was curious but also because I can't trust a backup strategy I haven't tested). This was one the first tests I ran: make a TM backup of a volume, wipe the volume, restore from TM, and see what happened. TM very definitely did not back up again the entire volume it had just restored.

Of course, that was on 10.5.0, with TM backing up to a local FireWire disk, but I'd be surprised if it didn't still work that way on 10.5.3 to a Time Capsule.

[David Bourke]

I'm absolutely certain about this. I wouldn't have written it otherwise.

At the time it happened to me I was on 10.5.2. There was 19.7 GB of data on the drive that was originally backed up.

I did a final TM backup a half hour before the machine was collected for repair. When it arrived back, I restored from that last backup and as soon as the restore finished, Time Machine started to back up. I noticed that it seemed to be taking a long time.

Out of curiosity, I opened the TM prefs panel and saw that it had backed up 2 GB out of slightly less than 18 GB.

I've since been informed that once a drive is erased, it gets a new UUID. I'm told this is why TM thinks it's a new setup.

[David Bourke]

OK, to continue "The Attack of the Clones"...

Today, I:

1. Erased both "Tiger" and "Leopard" volumes.

2. Using CCC 3.1, cloned my Mac Pro boot HD to "Tiger" and tested it – it booted the Mac Pro just fine.

3. Hooked up the iMac in Target Disk mode to the Mac Pro and, using CCC, cloned its boot HD to "Leopard."

Result: the 'Leopard" clone would not boot the iMac. And the "Tiger" clone would no longer boot the Mac Pro. Both machines got into a Restart loop, never getting beyond the spinning gear.

Erasing the "Leopard" clone once again enabled the "Tiger" clone to function as a startup disk.

Conclusion: Leopard 10.5.3 and Tiger 10.4.11 volumes cannot coexist on the same firewire drive.

Guess I'll have to buy another one...