All mounted volumes erased installing Xcode 4 under Lion

Question

All mounted volumes erased installing Xcode 4 under Lion

I installed Lion, then installed Xcode 4. I did this TWICE (fool that I am). The first time I lost my entire system disk. The second time I lost my entire system disk, my Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule, and a hundred Gbytes of photos and other media on my ReadyNAS raid box. I had no clue that such a bug was even possible. Today I found the same issue that occurred with Snow Leopard, occurring from last March to last June:

All mounted volumes erased when system...: Apple Support Communities

Oh, My God! I had no clue I could endanger storage in other machines on my network just by installing an app on my iMac. This is my first time here, so I haven't yet discoverred how to report bugs, but PLEASE, don't let this go by. This has cost me 10 days of work and untold heartache. Thank heaven I didn't have more volumes mounted before the install.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.2), Installing latest Xcode 4.2

Posted on Oct 17, 2011 5:04 PM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 17, 2011 11:56 PM in response to paulfromsantacruz

If you want to report this issue to Apple's engineering, send a bug report or an enhancement request via its Bug Reporter system. To do this, register as an Apple Developer—it's free and available for all Mac users and gets you a look at some development software. Since you already have an Apple username/ID, use that. Once a member, go to Apple BugReporter and file your bug report or enhancement request. You'll get a response and a follow-up number; thus, starting a dialog with engineering.

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Answer 2

Oct 18, 2011 2:19 AM in response to paulfromsantacruz

Try booting to Recovery HD and run Disk Utility and do

a Repair Disk on the OSX partition. Maybe there is just some

directory corruption that Repair Disk might fix. Also,

do a Repair Permissions as well.

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Answer 3

Oct 18, 2011 9:48 AM in response to woodmeister50

Like brushing teeth to cure cancer. Of course, not only did I try Disk Utility, but I spent almost $200 on disk recovery software to try to salvage something. No luck. The only reason I recovered the second time was that I had copied my Time Machine sparsebundle to my NAS, so that even though the Xcode install erased the Time Machine backup I still had a way to (partially) recover.

What I am looking for now is how to avoid the "erasing all mounted volumes" bug and safely install Xcode. Attempting to report the bug just gave me a Bug Reporter error, so I'm about to call Developer Customer Support by phone.

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Answer 4

jsd2

Level 5

6,245 points

Oct 18, 2011 10:22 AM in response to paulfromsantacruz

FWIW, this post was marked "Correct Answer" in this Snow Leopard thread:

Install Xcode from the App Store = Deleted System

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Apr 26, 2011 12:58 PM (in response to Frustrated Dylan)

Been working with Apple and finally have a resolution that worked here anyway.

They traced the problem down to my /Applications/Installers/ folder where a previous version of an early Xcode installer had migrated from an old G5 as I migrated all apps having recently purchased a new iMac.

I deleted that and another G5 installer and Xcode installed flawlessly via the AP store.

That said I wouldn't recommend attempting to install Xcode from the AP Store without first...

- Verifying that you have a recent TimeMachine backup.

- Logging off all networked drives and connected drives--even flash drives.

--------------------------------------------

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Answer 5

Oct 23, 2011 6:05 PM in response to jsd2

Thanks jsd2. I had seen this before, but didn't want to "assume" that it was the fix for the latest Lion and Xcode, as the bug and fix were reported for Snow Leopard. I girded the ol' loins and tried a third install, this time with the Ethernet cable unplugged, and after deleting the /Applications/Installers folder. It Xcode installed fine.

So, the same bug is still there and the same fix still works. SUCH a castrophic bug, though. Certainly this should be raised and fixed ASAP. Unfortunately, three times I tried to submit my first bug report and three times the Bug Reporter just said that there was some kind of error and gave me an email link to report the Bug Reporter failure. I've just gotten the automated response from that. No sign of human involvement yet.

At least I'm up and running Xcode 4 now.

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