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November 13, 2003
Panther Woes
My Software Updater last night noticed the 10.3.1 upgrade, and I proceeded to install it. After it was done, I chose to shut down the machine as I wasn't really using it, and was about to goto sleep. Waking up this morning I discovered to my great joy, that this was more than an upgrade. It was, in fact, a great many steps backwards! I can only begin to believe this was because I've had FileValut enabled on my system, but I can't be certain.
It seems every PDF found on my desktop somehow became no longer a valid PDF format file, requiring me to re-download them. Almost every preference for Applications I've had is now gone (Safari cache, Kung Log prefs, Safari prefs, iChat prefs, etc), and more importantly my entire iCal is now empty (it knows the calendars, but contains no events for each). Not a good start to the morning, but thankfully I've backed up all of this stuff recently when I upgraded to Panther initially. I'll just make up the difference in data loss somehow. This proves to be no good. Replacing the Library with the backup library doesn't provide any difference in operation. Marko has suggested that somehow the system is looking for my Library in another location, and I'm starting to believe him. But where?
I've now spent a lot of time disabling the FileVault feature in hopes that things will begin to clear up again. Now if only I could figure out how to get everything back to operational status..
So now I'm left with a completely bogus setup. Again. Thanks Apple.
[UPDATE: After talking with Eric for a bit, we discovered that apparently the 10.3.1 updater has a known bug if you try to run it with the FileVault option enabled. My question now is, why did the updater, or even the installer allow this to happen? Shouldn't there have been a check within the Installer at least to stop the process if FileVault had been enabled?
After disabling FileVault, I was able to slowly restore the backup copies of my Preferences. It took awhile, but at least it's back to only a week out of date.]
Posted by Dan at November 13, 2003 07:09 AM