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OS 10.5.8 update failure

After making an up-to-date clone of my system I downloaded the OS 10.5.8 Combo updater and proceeded to install it. Unfortunately,it is apparently hung up at "one minute remaining". I know that I can either clone the system back from my backup or attempt an archive and install (probably not a great idea because of the unknown state of the system if I power it down). Any other thoughts before I proceed?

Thanks

MDD Dual 1.42 GHz FW800, Mac OS X (10.5.7), 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 24" Dell Display,

Posted on Aug 5, 2009 6:25 PM

57 replies

Aug 5, 2009 9:07 PM in response to Michael Mortilla

Many thanks to you and TheGuyintheProjectionBooth. My installer had hung at 5 minutes for about 45 minutes and I was about to give up on it. But after your encouraging words I gave it another 10 and voila, Installation Successful!

Aug 5, 2009 9:13 PM in response to faithinformed

Excellent! Frankly, it was a lesson I learned installing Panther! Every time the installer would "hang" I would panic and push the power button, restart and reinstall. I much have done this 10 times and lost some data as a result due to a corrupted directory or something. That was the dark ages. Now it's all about patience. 🙂

Aug 5, 2009 10:08 PM in response to TheGuyintheProjectionBooth

My MacBook Pro did the combo update to 10.5.8 without a hitch. My Powerbook has been on the "Installer script...3min" in excess of 40 min. Thanks for your comments. I'll leave it along overnight and see what the morning brings.

Aug 5, 2009 10:20 PM in response to Betty R. Beckham

Once the update is done, it will ask to restart and sit there until you agree. Then it will update boot caches which can be a long process as well.

Douglas

Level 3

788 points

Aug 5, 2009 10:20 PM in response to Richard Briscoe

Kind of a weird update here. After the install I clicked on Restart. When I came back a while later only the desktop and Dock were showing, no clock or anything else. I clicked on the Finder icon in the Dock and nothing happened. Clicked on other icons in the Dock and nothing. Figured I had nothing to lose so I held the startup button down until my Mini powered down. Waited about 5 minutes and hit the power button. It booted up normally and things seems to be running fine. Repaired permissions and everything seems normal.

Aug 5, 2009 10:21 PM in response to Betty R. Beckham

Betty, you're quite welcome. Glad my last minute observation was helpful. And here in my going for broke (broken) attempt to see what running it in normal operation would do, I thought, for a brief moment- very brief, that running a browser while running the second update could interfere, my new 10.5 gun-shyness, with it. Spending that time to find this thread, post my first comment, then move on while forgetting that I was updating, wasted the time that I would not normally allow. Hopefully, yours won't take all night. Now that would be ridiculous.

Aug 5, 2009 10:32 PM in response to TheGuyintheProjectionBooth

Well, this is odd. The installer had been stuck at "one minute remaining" for quite some time...I had not kept track exactly, but it had to have been about a half hour. I had to leave and just left it as is with the intention of doing something about it "later".

When I returned some hours later it appears that the installation had "successfully" completed. I restarted and experienced a very, very slow boot process. When it did come up I ran permissions repair in disk utility and then cron maintenance, clearing of caches and so on with OnyX. Things are at least running now. I will be restarting the Mac in a minute to see if it behaves a little more normally.

As I have recently done archive and install to revert to OS 10.5.6 test some lingering sleep issues and then updated to OS 10.5.7 I can say that I have never, ever experienced such a problem with this hardware configuration. I have to wonder just what is wrong for this update to behave so badly.

Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions! I will keep some of them "tucked away" for future reference if I should encounter this problem on the other machines running Leopard.

Aug 6, 2009 12:54 AM in response to Richard Briscoe

update combo always in "safe" boot ..

i have several mac's all went perfect, the hang just before complete seems to be "normal", don't be nervous and keep fingers away.

Aug 6, 2009 4:15 AM in response to Richard Briscoe

I'm getting the same thing where the installer is stuck at 2 mins

BUT.

I know it's doing something.

If you bring up the installer log by going Command - L (or Window menu->Installer Log)

and then select "Show Errors Only" and change it to "Show All Logs" you'll see it's writing some metadata into the Receipts folder.

And just taking its own sweet time 🙂

PS I'm speculating that some code monkey didn't estimate how long this last process would take.

Message was edited by: Hone Melgren

Aug 6, 2009 4:20 AM in response to Hone Melgren

I just noticed something.

It's launching a seperate pkgutil process to update each file in the receipts folder -_-

Each and every file in the receipt file (there's many files per receipt)

Seems to be CodeSigning stuff.

sigh I just hope I don't run out of process numbers before it finishes (its up to Process # 6400 as I write this)

Some codemonkey needs a kick in the bum for this idea!

Message was edited by: Hone Melgren

Aug 6, 2009 4:20 AM in response to Richard Briscoe

It's not actually hung. if you pop open a terminal and peek at what it's doing while it seems to be accomplishing nothing, fsevents is mad busy, doing a billion and 1 writes to a receipts/packages.db.

What needs some help is the "2 minutes" line, that winds up taking 15 (for me).

Aug 6, 2009 4:29 AM in response to Richard Harris

Just performed the update.
I did the usual voodoo verified the disk and repaired permissions etc.
I switched off time machine and downloaded the update via software update.
The download went ok then it went to the time machine desktop and the installing files progress bar.
It stopped right away with an error could not update files due to an unknown error, with a restart button.
I restarted and I was back at 10.5.7, good recovery Apple.
I then downloaded the combo update 767mb I think and that installed ok.
I seen a dialogue "Updating bootcache files, installation will continue after completion, with an ok button"
The computer restarted a couple of times and it seems to be fine.
I'll update the list if there are any problems.

I think the failure of the first installation was it could not update the bootcache files but this is only a guess.

Aug 6, 2009 4:44 AM in response to Steven Moore

wowy, installing the combo 10.5.8 on an ancient powerbook G4 took more than 90 minutes, while hanging 80 minutes on 6 minutes to go 😉

on intel machines it took a 5-10 minuts only.

Aug 6, 2009 3:00 PM in response to Douglas

Douglas,

The same thing happened with an iMac (Mid-2007). After clicking "Restart", only the Desktop and Dock were showing. Like you, I held the power button until it shut down, waited a few minutes, then started it up again. After restarting and fixing permissions, there appear to be no issues.

So far, this is the only one of seven Macs that I've updated that has exhibited this problem.

LeafsMac

Level 1

28 points

Aug 6, 2009 4:04 PM in response to Famous Last Words

I'm writing this as my early 2008 Macbook Pro is updating using the Combo update, and I'm seeing the "updating receipt" stuff fly by in the Installer Log.

We Mac people sure are spoiled. If this was a Windows PC, I'd be crossing fingers, rubbing a rabbit's foot and doing a handstand while holding my mouth in a certain way in hopes it actually works.

Been stuck at 3 minutes for 45 minutes now, but it IS doing something.

Patience, Grasshopper, patience.

OS 10.5.8 update failure