Installing, Upgrading, Backing Up, and Restoring Mac OS X

See

• "Take Note: Developer Software," in Chapter 2, for more details on obtaining and installing this software.

Installing Mac OS X Without Starting Up from the Install Disc? Maybe...

To install Mac OS X on a volume other than the current startup volume, you don't necessarily have to restart from the Mac OS X Install disc. Instead, mount the disc and go to the /System/Installation/Packages folder (not found in the System folder on a hard drive running Mac OS X), which contains all the .pkg files used by the Mac OS X Install disc. From within this folder, locate the OSInstall.mpkg file and then double-click it to launch the Installer utility. You should now be able to install the software.

Note, however, that you do this at your own risk: I've seen cases where it hasn't worked. The safest bet is to start up from the disc.

See

• "Logging in as root," in Chapter 4, for more on the Reset Password command.

See

• "Take Note: Why and How to Partition," below, for information on how and why you would want to partition a drive when using Mac OS X.
• Chapter 5 for more on startup issues, including using passwords and Disk Utility.

See

• "System Profiler," in Chapter 2, for more information on this utility.
• Chapter 8, for more on Network Utility.
• Chapter 10, as well as numerous other places throughout the book, for coverage of Terminal.

Why and How to Partition

Partitioning a hard drive means dividing it into two or more separate volumes. Each volume in turn mounts separately when you launch your Mac. In most respects, the volumes behave just as if you had two (assuming you made two partitions) separate hard drives (rather than just one). The only times it will be apparent that just one hard drive is at work are when the hard drive fails or if you need to reformat it.

All drives ship from Apple with just one partition. Thus, if you want two or more partitions, you must create them yourself. Using Mac OS X software, changing the number of partitions on a drive requires erasing its contents. Thus, anything on your drive that you want to save will need to be backed up first—which is precisely why I recommend partitioning a drive the day you unpack your new Mac. There will be nothing to back up because you haven't used it yet—which means the process will be simplified considerably.

Why partition?

A primary benefit of partitioning is that if you make both volumes startup volumes (in other words, you install Mac OS X on both partitions), you have two ways of starting up your Mac from the same drive. If you're having trouble with volume A, for example, and you need to restart from another volume to fix the problem, volume B is ready to go. You don't necessarily need to seek out a CD or other external medium.

You can also use a second partition to install a different version of Mac OS X. For example, if you're currently running Panther, you could install Tiger on a second partition, to test it out, before deciding whether to install it on your main partition.

Even if you don't choose to make the second partition bootable, you can still use it to store backups of important personal files (such as documents and photos) that are stored on the first partition. Or (as I discuss more in Chapter 6), you can choose to store Mac OS X's virtual-memory swap files or even your entire home directory on the second partition (to protect them from problems with the boot volume).

Note: The best and safest backup option is to move or copy these items to another drive altogether, not just another partition of the same drive. If the drive fails completely for some reason, such a failure is likely to affect both partitions.

In any case, you can erase one partition (for example, via the Installer's Erase and Install option) without erasing any others. The day may come, for example, when Mac OS X files get so messed up that the only solution is to erase the volume and start over. With two partitions, you can erase the boot partition without losing whatever is on the second partition.

Mac OS 9 on the second partition. If you have a Mac that's still capable of booting from Mac OS 9, you can make the second partition a Mac OS 9 boot volume. In fact, the ideal arrangement is to maintain two Mac OS 9 System Folders: one on a separate partition from Mac OS X and a second on the same partition as Mac OS X. Since some files work in Mac OS 9 directly but not in Classic (primarily extensions and control panels—for more on this, see the online Classic chapter), with only one copy of Mac OS 9 installed, you may have to choose between giving up on these programs so that you can use Classic in Mac OS X or keeping them and giving up on Classic. Having two Mac OS 9 System Folders allows you to use one version of Mac OS 9 (typically the one on its own partition) when you want to boot from Mac OS 9 and the other (the one on the Mac OS X partition) when you want to launch Classic—you can have your cake and eat it, too!

A related benefit: If you hold down the Option key at startup (as discussed in Chapter 5), you can select a startup volume. If Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 reside on the same partition, however, only the most recently booted OS will appear. If you cannot start up from Mac OS X, for example, you will not be able to use this method to switch to starting up from Mac OS 9, because the Mac OS 9 System Folder will not be listed as an option. Your only option is to start up from a CD or DVD. With Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X on separate partitions, the Mac OS 9 choice would be available, and you could bypass the need for the disc—helpful if you need to boot in Mac OS 9 to back up files before erasing a troublesome Mac OS X volume.

Mac OS X on the second partition. Alternatively, especially for Macs that cannot boot from Mac OS 9, you can have the second partition be a second Mac OS X boot volume—for example, populated with maintenance and repair utilities. (In this case, I would boot from the second partition only in emergencies, since regularly switching back and forth between two Mac OS X installations can lead to confusion and problems, such as permissions errors that prevent files from opening.)

Bottom line: I recommend partitioning a drive as long as your hard drive is large enough to accommodate more than one partition. If you hard drive is 60 GB or more, you should have more than enough room for at least two partitions.

How to partition?

The following are some general instructions for dividing a drive into two partitions. Remember: Doing so will erase all existing data on any and all current partitions for this drive.

1. After starting up from a Mac OS X Install disc (as described in the main text), from the Utilities menu select the Disk Utility command.
2. Select the drive you want to partition from the list in the left column of the Disk Utility window.
3. Click the Partition button.
4. From the Volume Scheme menu, select "2 partitions" (assuming you want only two partitions).
5. Drag the divider between the partitions to adjust their sizes as desired. Mac OS X works best when you have a healthy amount of unused hard-drive space on the boot volume. Thus, in choosing a partition size, make sure that you'll have at least several gigabytes of unused space after you've completed the installation. If this is not the case, I recommend getting a larger hard drive or not partitioning.
6. Click the first of the two partitions. In the Volume Information section, enter a name in the Name text box and select a drive format—most likely Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Now click the second partition and repeat the process. Note: If you intend to boot from Mac OS 9, make sure the Mac OS 9 Drivers Installed option is selected, if such an option is present. If your Mac cannot boot from Mac OS 9 (as is the case for all currently shipping Macs), you will not get this option.
7. Click the Partition button.
8. Now that the partitions have been created, the next thing you'll likely want to do is install Mac OS X on one partition, including restoring all the additional software that was on your Mac when it first arrived. Mac OS 9 may not have been installed on your drive at that time. Still, it should be available via the Restore software. Refer to the sections on installing and restoring software, in the main text of this chapter, for details.
9. Finally, after restarting from your newly installed Mac OS X volume, if you want Mac OS X on the second partition, don't drag and drop the Mac OS X System software from one partition to the other. This will not result in a bootable partition. To install Mac OS X on the second partition, use the Installer a second time. If you instead want Mac OS 9 on the second partition, copy a Mac OS 9 System Folder—as well as the Applications (Mac OS 9) folder, if you want—to the second partition, via drag and drop, so that you have a separate copy of the System Folder there. You can delete the original Mac OS 9 software after you've copied it, should you want only one Mac OS 9 system on your drive.

Partitioning without erasing. There are now utilities—such as Prosoft's Drive Genius (www.prosofteng.com)—that can partition a drive on the fly or even modify the size of an existing partition without requiring that you erase its contents. Always back up your drive before using one of these utilities, in case something goes wrong. I can tell you that I have used Drive Genius and it worked just fine.

Note: These utilities are at least partly based on Apple's Unix pdisk command, included as part of Mac OS X.

Where Are the Utilities on the Install Disc?

The Startup Disk, Reset Password, Disk Utility, Terminal, System Profiler, and Network Utility applications are stored in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder stored at the root level of the CD or DVD. When you select one of these applications from the Utilities menu, the Installer launches the copy of the utility found there. This /Applications/Utilities folder also contains the Open Firmware Password Utility (discussed in Chapter 5).

Case-Sensitive HFS Formatting

If you're using Tiger (client or server) or Panther (server version only), when you format a drive you will be presented with an additional Format option: "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)" (in Tiger) or "Case-sensitive HFS Plus (+)" (in Panther Server).

This format is exactly like the ordinary Mac OS Extended format, except that all file and folder names are case sensitive. That is, a folder with the name My Memos is seen as distinct from one named My Memos. In contrast, these names would be seen as the same name in standard Mac OS Extended—in fact, you couldn't even create two folders with these names in the same parent folder; instead, you would get a message saying the name already exists. (Note: Standard Mac OS X Extended remembers that the M in Memos is uppercase; however, the name is not treated differently in searches or file databases from one with a lowercase m.)

The main rationale for this is that Unix is case sensitive. By setting up a server to be similarly case sensitive, it eliminates some potential problems and inconsistencies between Mac OS X's Unix base and the higher-level user interface.

However, although it may make sense for certain server setups to use this format, you shouldn't use it in a client system unless you've got a specific reason to do so and are aware of the risks. Although most third-party disk utilities have been updated for compatibility with case-sensitive file systems, not all have, and using an incompatible one could result in data loss. A repair utility that is unaware of the case-sensitive format may assume that My Memos and My memos, if in the same location, are the same folder and delete one of them. In addition, few Mac OS X applications understand case-sensitive file systems.

Why and How to Use Archive and Install

The Archive and Install feature in Mac OS X is similar to the old Clean Install feature of Mac OS 9. Rather than updating an existing installation, it in essence creates an entirely new installation of system software.

Why Archive? You would use the Archive option for either of the following reasons:

The Installer refuses to update or reinstall Mac OS X, or you need to install an older version, and you don't want to reformat the drive. This option is especially helpful when reinstalling Mac OS X from the disc would be a downgrade from the existing OS version (say, because you updated to Mac OS X 10.4.1 via Software Update after installing 10.4.0 from the CD—you can't do a standard install of an older version of the OS). In Mac OS X 10.1.x, Apple strongly advised against doing any sort of downgrade installation, even if it seemed to be permitted by the Installer. At that time, Apple claimed that a downgrade could lead to the presence of files (especially Unix files and /System/Library files) from multiple OS versions in the same system—a potential source of conflicts. Apple's unwelcome solution was to erase your drive if you wanted or needed to do a downgrade installation. The Archive feature of newer versions of the Mac OS X Installer solves this dilemma. Now you can downgrade without erasing by using Archive and Install to install the older version and then update the new installation to the latest version.

You want to preserve files from the previous OS version. In some cases, you may worry that a simple upgrade will overwrite existing files that you may wish you had saved. For example, the Installer may install a new version of an application that contains a new bug. Going back to the old version may work around this bug until the inevitable bug-fix update is released. With the Archive function, the old application version is still in your Previous Systems folder and can be returned to active duty—assuming it works in Mac OS X. Similarly, you may want to replace some modified settings files—especially in the Unix software—with the new ones installed by Mac OS X, as detailed later in this sidebar.

For minor upgrades, such as from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.4.1, the Options button is not available, meaning you cannot choose Archive and Install. Instead, your only option is Upgrade. However, if you're performing a major reference upgrade (that is, where there is a change in the first number after the decimal, such as from Mac OS X 10.3.x to 10.4.x), you will be presented with a choice of options. In this case, I recommend using the Archive and Install option and preserving the /Users folders, as described in the main text. There's very little downside to this option, other than the additional disk space required to store the archived software.

Reinstalling software and resetting preferences after an Archive installation. After an Archive and Install, you may need to reinstall some third-party software to get it to work properly. You may also need to reset some serial-number registrations. For example, I needed to re-enter my QuickTime Pro serial number.

As noted in the main text, you may also need to re-create some Mac OS X System Preferences settings. For example, when upgrading from Mac OS X 10.2.x to 10.3, I needed to reset the time zone in Date & Time, because it reverted to the Pacific time zone. I also had to re-enable the Network Time check in the same preferences pane.

Moving files after an Archive installation. After an Archive clean install, the archived OS software (in the Previous Systems folder) may contain a few files that you want to return to the now-current OS. As a general rule, I wouldn't move anything back until you discover that a setting or feature is missing and you can't re-create it easily by entering new settings. This way, you avoid the problems that can occur if you replace a needed newer file with an older one. That being said, included among the items you may want to move back are the following:

• Files and folders in the old /Library folder. Files and folders that exist in your archived /Library folder but not in the updated /Library folder may contain additions and preferences files that you want to preserve. One example would be receipt files for third-party software in the Receipts folder. Another would be the StuffitEngineShell.cfm file, contained in the CFMSupport folder in /Library, which provides support for StuffIt Expander. Also, if you're running a Web server from your Mac but are storing your files in the system's Web directory rather than your user-level Web directory, you should transfer any custom contents of /Library/WebServer/Documents. Third-party items in the StartupItems folder are also not moved.Note: Sometimes, simply moving files from the old /Library folder to the new one doesn't work. For example, moving startup items from the previous /Library/StartupItems folder to your new /Library/StartupItems folder doesn't always work. You may need to reinstall the related software to install new copies of the StartupItems files. Another specific example: Some Palm Desktop users upgrading from Jaguar to Panther via Archive and Install found that after the upgrade, syncing no longer worked. The reason was that the HotSync Library files, located in /Library/CFMSupport, were not moved. Moving them manually did not fix the problem, either; the Palm software had to be reinstalled.
• Certain applications. Some applications that require a password or registration code to function may not offer the option to re-enter the password. Instead, you may need to transfer an application's password/serial-number file from the Previous Systems folder. Otherwise, you may need to reinstall the application software.

If you do decide to transfer files back, you may be blocked from moving certain files due to insufficient permission access. In such cases, you will need to use techniques to modify permissions or authenticate the moves (such as those described in Chapter 6) so that you can bypass this blockade.

Deleting files after an Archive installation: Help files. You may want to delete some files that were carried over from the old home directory to the new one. If you are having problems with Help Viewer, for example, check out "Take Note: Getting Help for Help," in Chapter 2.

Transferring Unix files. Finally, you may have reason to move back some directories and files in Unix's invisible /private directory. In particular, you may want to move the following files and folders:

• /etc/hostconfig. If you've set up Sendmail on your Mac, this file is important and probably should be restored from Previous Systems to the current Mac OS X folder. (Note, however, that Panther and later versions of Mac OS X use Postfix as their default Unix mail server, which means that this may be a good opportunity to switch, since Postfix has a much better reputation than Sendmail.)
• /etc/httpd/httpd.conf. If you edited your Apache configuration (used for Web server preferences beyond those you can set up via the Sharing System Preferences pane), move this file back.
• /var/log. This folder contains archives of system-level log files. If they're valuable to you, copy them over.
• /var/root. If you enabled the root user in Mac OS X, this folder is the root user's /User folder: It contains the Desktop, Documents, and user-level Library directories, as well as any other files and folders that may have been created or saved to your home directory when you were logged in as root or using an application as root. If this folder contains any files you want to save, transfer them back.

You may need to log in as a root user or launch a file utility as root to make some of these changes.

Using the Previous Systems folder. One weakness of the Archive option is that the archived system is not bootable. In addition, the Installer does not offer a "switch back" option. Thus, if you decide that upgrading was a mistake (which is very unlikely!) and you want to return to the previous version of Mac OS X, there's no easy way to do a reverse exchange. For that reason, make sure that your Mac OS X volume is backed up before doing the upgrade. Then if you decide to go back, you can restore the old Mac OS X version from your backup.

Note: A third-party back-up program, Shirt Pocket's SuperDuper! (www.shirt-pocket.com), has a feature that offers the ability to switch back to a prior installed version of the OS.

Note: The application software in the Previous Systems folder—all older versions of "stock" Mac OS X applications that have been replaced by newer versions—remains functional. Thus, if you double-click a document that uses one of these applications and a newer version is not available elsewhere, the document will attempt to launch via the application in the Previous Systems folder.

Preserve Users and Network Settings. As I stated in the main text, I generally recommend using the Preserve Users and Network Settings option when doing an Archive and Install. But what if you did not use it and later wish you had? Good news: You can still restore your home directory; it will just be more work to do so. The directory is preserved in the /Previous Systems/Users folder. What you will need to do is create a new account for yourself, using the same short name as your old account. You can then copy files from the old account into the new one. You may need to reset permissions of some files, making yourself the owner, before you can use them. You can repeat this for any additional accounts you may have that you want to re-create.

Deleting Previous System (#) folder. After updating, you may eventually decide you no longer need any of the files stored in the Previous System 1 (or 2, and so on) folder and want to delete the folder to regain the disk space. If your account has administrator status, you can simply drag the folder to the Trash; if you're asked to authenticate, provide your user name and account password.

Custom Config Files After a Mac OS X Update

When you make custom changes to a config file, the changes may be wiped out when you update to a new version of Mac OS X. This is because the update often replaces the customized config file with an updated default copy of the file. It will appear that all of your customized changes have been lost. In some cases, the Installer nicely preserves the customized file in the same directory, adding an extension to the filename, as in httpd.conf.applesaved or hostconfig.old. This allows you to recover your changes and add them back to the new file. Alternatively, you can swap the files so that the inactive file is returned to active duty. For example, for the httpd.conf files, give the active httpd.conf file a name like httpd.conf.base and rename the applesaved file as httpd.conf. Doing this httpd.conf change requires root access and should be done with Personal Web Sharing turned off.

However, starting with the installer package for the Mac OS X 10.2.5 Update, Apple reversed what happens when an update is installed, at least for the httpd.conf file. In describing this, Apple states, "Mac OS X 10.2.5 and later updates have a different installation method for the new httpd.conf file. The Installer checks to see if you have modified the existing httpd.conf file. If you have not, then it automatically replaces it with the new version. If you have modified it, then your modified file is left in place, and the new file is written as /etc/httpd/httpd.conf.default. At your leisure, you should add your modifications to the new file and retire the old one."

Mac OS X Install Disc vs. Upgrade Disc

Major Mac OS X upgrades (typically defined as one in which the first digit after the decimal point changes, such as from 10.3 to 10.4) almost always require a new full-installation Mac OS X disc (a DVD or several CDs)—specifically, one that you must pay Apple to obtain. From this disc, you can install a new, full version of Mac OS X, even on an empty volume.

Between major updates, however, Apple releases minor updates. These free updates are available via Software Update or by downloading the update file from the Web. Such updates, however, can be applied only to already installed versions of Mac OS X (and sometimes only to the most recent prior version).

In some cases, Apple may offer an upgrade disc, such as via the Mac OS X Up-To-Date program (www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate), that differs slightly from the full install disc.

In the most extreme case, both the Install Mac OS X and Archive and Install options will be disabled on the upgrade disc. You will be able to upgrade only from an existing older version of Mac OS X. This limitation is significant, as it prevents you from using one of the key install features of Mac OS X: Archive and Install.

Tiger upgrade discs do include an Archive and Install option. However, it works only to upgrade a volume that is presently running Panther. You could not use this option, for example, to downgrade from Mac OS X 10.4.1 back to 10.4.0. You still cannot use the upgrade disc to install Mac OS X on a volume that does not already have an earlier version of Mac OS X installed. For such cases, you need the full Install disc.

See

• "Take Note: Developer Software," in Chapter 2, for more details.
• "Updating Mac OS X," later in this chapter, for more on updating.