Anyone else with no sound in Mail?

Si,

The other day, while perusing various different forum postings under the headings of Sierra, Mavericks and Yosemite, I came across a surprising number of reports where users had tried to install the OS on to an external drive but where, after waiting a long time, the install process either stalled or the drive was just not bootable at the end of it. Some users repeated the procedure, only to get exactly the same result. This gave rise to a collective notion that conceivably some brands/types of USB drives were compatible with this process but others not.

Because having a new OS on an external drive is always going to be a very useful arrangement, I'm persisting with this 'project' and so I've now ordered a Samsung T3 USB3.1 250GB SSD drive. I'm taking a chance that the Samsung drive will not be one that fails as a 'bootable OS' drive. Virtually all my external drives are solid state types, BTW (no noise, less power used, faster access); same is true of my Mac. I'm intending to make a 40GB Mac partition on the Samsung, into which to install the OS. I've still got the Sierra installer, for instance, lurking around on my Mac. The other space on the new 250GB drive can be used for something else later on. With another national holiday period imminent, though, I don't anticipate receiving the Samsung drive until the latter half of next week.

Does the OSX installer have to be executed specifically from the Applications folder, or can it be moved to somewhere else before doing it? Is it not true that once you've executed the installer file in the Applications folder, it gets automatically deleted?

As an aside, I ran an experiment to compare the speed of installing data on the previous 32GB USB stick when (a) connected directly to the Mac's main USB hub, and (b) when connected to a port on my powered hub. All ports except the stick itself, were USB3.0. Unsurprisingly, the Mac reported virtually no difference in the time taken for this. So, I do at least know that the hub's not hampering performance. Clearly, with that particular stick, it was its USB2.0 which was slowing things down.

I can't recall if I've asked you this before, Si, but would I be correct in assuming that, for this experiment, every time I would log out from Sierra (running from the exteranal drive) or switch from Sierra to Mavericks (and then back again at some future time), I'd lose all my Sierra configuration settings (which I would have had to input laboriously, once Sierra was first running from the external drive)? Isn't that the one big disadvantage of running OSX from an external drive in this way?

I'll probably want to assess Sierra (and future OSXs) over a week or two before deciding whether to then do a proper clean, permanent install of it. But within that period I wouldn't want to be stuck with just Sierra (for fear of losing all my personal settings and things like Mail if I exited from it), I'd want to return to my Mavericks to continue with normal work, and then return to Sierra to do some more evaluation of it.

Wed 3rdMay.

Si et al,

Success at last! The news is good.

I had to wait for almost a week before the aforementioned Samsung 250GB T3 external SSD arrived, but at midday I was able to get to work with it.

First on the agenda was to use the Erase tab in Disk Utility to delete the as-delivered partition on the Samsung disk. I overwrote it with a single-pass of zeros just to make sure. It'd come with an onboard security app, suitable for several different platforms - which I didn't need. The zero writes took some 20 mins to complete, which seemed pretty nifty compared to my previous usage of USB stick(s). I then chose the Partition tab in DU and named and made a 40GB Mac OS Extended Journaled GUID partition on it. The other 210GB remains unallocated and could at some later date perhaps be used for other things. This was all done, incidentally, with the Samsung disk plugged into my powered hub. I left all other external disks and peripherals connected.

I then made sure there were no applications still left open on my iMac. Meanwhile, "Install macOS Sierra.app" was sitting in my Mavericks's Application folder and I decided to execute it from there. There was the usual agreeing to the licensing to do, etc., followed by being asked which destination disk for Sierra was to be used, so obviously I selected the Samsung disk, the volume's name showing clearly in the display of usable disks. At that point something called 'Install Assistant' intervened and required me to enter my Mac login password before the install process would proceed any further.

I half expected the overall install process to involve several mini-installs and restarts, and that was exactly how it turned out. The first phase of the install process took just 4 mins. When that finished a new install sequence started, which had a duration of about 15 mins. Quite different to all the slowness and waiting-around that I'd endured with the USB sticks a week or more ago! With the first install phase, I got a little concerned, as one of my other external SSDs also on the hub became dynamically activated for a minute or two and I wondered why that would happen. However, in retrospect the contents of that disk have remained unaltered, so maybe I'd merely witnessed a flurry of control transfers across my powered hub?

A further restart occurred but was quickly replaced by a Welcome screen. This was, of course, where Install Assistant showed itself, and I had to then spend some minutes configuring the keyboard country, wi-fi (not relevant in my case), turning off Siri, and opting out of Share Analytics and Crash Data for Apple. As you might expect, I was also asked for my full name, account name and Mac login password to use on Sierra. I decided to keep to the existing ones I use on Mavericks (after all, this externally-bootable Sierra is just for trying out the operating system, not as anything permanent). I was also asked which of the relevant external disks in my setup I wanted to use for Time Machine backups. I wasn't sure at that point whether TM would, during the next week or two of assessing Sierra, prove useful, but I decided nonetheless to give it the go-ahead. Somehow, it came up with a figure of 98.79GB needing to be backed up! Goodness knows where it got that figure from! Anyway, this 'first full backup' then proceeded in the background, and completed about 40 mins later. I went away and made lunch in the meantime. (In retrospect, it may have been better to have not opted for TM, since this has now subsequently eaten into the TM disk's remaining capacity, causing some deletions of earlier TM images). But anyway, as soon as the TM backup initiated, the screen automatically booted into Sierra, to the default Desktop, with my relevant external disks showing. Like I say, I decided to then let TM do its stuff for the 40 mins, before then me making a start on investigating Sierra.

I've only spent about 5 or 10 mins so far, setting up various things in System Preferences, but things are looking much, much better than a week or two ago, when I managed by the other method to get Sierra on to my iMac as a supposedly 'clean install' but which turned out to be anything but clean. Remember? Switching back to Mavericks was now a doddle, requiring me to simply go into Startup Disk in System Preferences and then logging in using the padlock so as to be able to choose the Mavericks (internal) disk rather than the Samsung Sierra disk.

I must say I've been very pleased with the Samsung disk itself. It features a metal case surround and measures about 3in x 2in x 0.5in, and comes equipped with a USB3.0/3.1 port and a 20in USBa-to-USBc lead (although I bought and used a Startech lead that was somewhat longer than that). The quality of manufacture of the disk appears very good and inspires confidence in it. Its speed performance seems really good. The casing got mildly warm during those fast writes, while installing Sierra on to it, but for something that small you'd expect a compact thermal density, I guess. I've actually raised it off the table surface by applying a set of small stick-on feet on its underside; that should keep a little more air circulating around it; but that's just me being particular. Can't fault its speed performance. In fact, thus far I can't preceive any lagging at all when running Sierra from it.

Clearly, using a half-decent external USB drive has been key in this - which I think is what you contended, Si, quite a while ago. So, thanks for pushing me in the right direction. I'm well pleased. Before, I can't think why on earth I faffed around putting the Sierra Installer on to a USB stick and consequently messing about with a further stick, when all I needed to do was to download the Sierra upgrade file on to my Mavericks machine as normal, and then execute it from there, putting it on to a good-quality external disk.

Whether I'll still be as pleased after a couple of weeks of exercising Sierra using this new booting arrangement will be another matter entirely, though. For one thing, I'll be very disappointed if I now find that there's still no sound notification for the inbox in Apple Mail. But if that's the case that'll all be down to Apple, not a fault in the installation or in the hardware. I've yet to configure my network settings and reinstall my mail account. Incidentally, at one point during the install processes, Assistant stated that it could, if required, get and install all my network and e-mail settings from my existing TM disk. I declined at the time.

Before I forget, these are the capacities I now see in my newly-loaded Sierra:

System 7.77GB

Library 1.12GB

Applications 979.1MB

Users 12MB

This suggests that no more than about 10GB should have been needed for the size of the external disk. But interestingly, when I look in Storage and USB in System Report on my Mac, some 14.2GB of the external drive are used. This might be why, on the attempt last week, the install process refused to proceed on the grounds of the nominal 16GB USB stick not being big enough. Either way, it looks as though it's best to use a disk that's at least 32GB nominal size. For the experiment just done, I set up a 40GB partition. Incidentally, in System Report you can see that a Recovery HD (650MB) gets written on to the external disk.

Turning now to your above reply, I've noted what you've recommended concerning the overwriting of SSDs.

Regards the "USB macOS Installer", yes it's not necessary if all you will be doing is installing OS's on external drives, but if in the future you want to install onto the main internal drive then it will be (unless you use the Recovery Partition or Internet Recovery).

Let's assume that I do eventually want to install Sierra - or its successor - on to my internal drive. Well, as you know, I'll want to ensure that it's a clean version of the OS, without any of my possibly-damaged Mavericks files or settings being carried over. From my experience, it appears that if I were to use the Recovery Partition or Internet Recovery that's what happens. Clearly, the new approach of putting the Installer on to a bootable external USB disk will get around this problem. However, I think I might have a particular problem in that scenario, because my internal disk is split into three volumes (partitions). This therefore presents a further question, that being: I'd need to wipe the internal disk prior to the install, but surely I can't do that without destroying the other two volumes (partitions) and their contents? So, would it be possible to just wipe the existing boot volume?

Si, the answer at present is no, I'm not yet in a position to do the clean install, or even to pursue the startup swap-out with Mavericks. Under Sierra, the latter will require me to set up my account in Mail from scratch, and then of course run the account and fiddle around with Notifications, to see if the sound issue is still there or not.

The reason for the delay is not only because of the other, but related, Community topic that I started but also because of a succession of emergency domestic issues with which I've had to deal. Using the swap-out, I hope to be able to test out the sound problem later this week. Rest assured, I've not ignored it. I'm just as anxious as you are to come to a definite conclusion on it. Watch this space in the coming week.

Si,

I made a start but have met a problem that's barring me from setting up my Mail account. In Sierra, when I went to Mail and started with "Add new mail account", the response was "This cannot proceed because you do not have an internet connection". Unfortunately, I got the same response when I went to Internet Accounts in Sys Preferences.

I think this is happening because of an option I didn't use when Sierra was booting up into the iMac. Remember this is the swap-out trial version of Sierra. With that, you find that you have to use Restart/Opt, rather than making use of Sys Prefs > StartUp Disk. So you get the so-called StartUp Manager screen, with a choice of disks from which to boot. But what you also get there, at that point, is a dropdown menu of Internet connectivity types. When I saw the menu I couldn't figure out which type I should select; I use wired Ethernet and nothing resembling that seemed to be in the list; the choice seems to assume some form of wi-fi. So I left the selection as "Choose". When I double-clicked on the appropriate disk icon there, though, the booting proceeded and gave me Sierra, but clearly in retrospect the failure to have completed the dropdown left Sierra thinking that I had no Internet connection.

Can you give me any guidance on that? It's just odd that there seems to be nothing in the dropdown that refers to wired Ethernet. In fact, most names in the list seem to be quite cryptic.

As soon as I can sort that one out I'll be able to get on with configuring Mail, Notifications and Sound in Sierra, and then seeing how the sound side of things works out.

Just had a thought. Would Sierra have defaulted to wi-fi? And therefore if I can get 'wi-fi' in the Sierra menu bar, maybe just turning it off will cause the network connection to go to 'ethernet'?

Ah, and it's just dawned on me that I need to go into Sys Prefs > Network and set up my connection in detail there. Crikey, it's been some while since I last did all of that and clearly I'd forgotten it. I use fixed IP addresses on my home network. And there, of course, you can also turn off wi-fi if initially it's on.

Si,

Sorry about the 'no connection' incident. I must have had a 'senior moment' and totally forgot that Network had to be configured too. Well, the last time I ever had to think about my Network connections was more than three years ago! Anyway, once I'd done that I was then able to set up and configure my e-mail account in Mail without any problem. I also checked my Sound settings in Sys Preferences, and Notifications, and configured those appropriately.

I then spent virtually the whole of the afternoon experimenting with Mail, Sound and Notifications, in an effort to obtain both the 'whoosh' when sending an e-mail and (in my case) the Blow alert sound when receiving an e-mail. But I'm sorry to report that, unlike in my Mavericks, there was no sound heard when receiving an e-mail. I got the whoosh on Send, but that's all. I tried all variations of the selected sound.

On one or two occasions, though, I got the Blow alert, followed immediately by the whoosh, when sending. Go figure! One other thing I noticed about the e-mail account was that the count of unread inbox messages was never right; it was always one out. And another was that the check-for-new-messages-period always seemed to be about double the time that I'd selected.

My only conclusion can be that, when Sierra was devised by Apple, some errors/bugs were inadvertently introduced by the Apple Mail developers into Mail. Indeed, they may have been first introduced as long ago as El Capitan or Yosemite. My feeling is that these days Apple gives low priority to sorting out bugs in Apple Mail. I noticed also that the time settings for 'Do Not Disturb', in Notifications, were not permanently retained and always defaulted back to 22hrs and 07hrs for the on and off times. In Mavericks, however, that works fine.

After spending some hours on it, it occurred to me to check for updates to Sierra. The mechanism for doing this manually is different to how it is in Mavericks but I got to grips with it quite quickly. There were three updates awaiting: iTunes 12.6.1, macOS Sierra Update 10.12.5, and Remote Desktop Client update 3.9.2. They totalled 1.18GB. Installing them involved several restarts and took about 30 mins altogether. I'm afraid the updates made no difference, however.

Aside from investigating this sound issue in Sierra, I found that the mere ability to quite easily swap from Mavericks to this clean version of Sierra and back again was really good. I've still quite a bit more configuring of certain things to do. Over the next week I'll be making an overall assessment of Sierra for myself. I'll then be in a position to do a permanent install of the clean Sierra, using the other file on the other external disk volume. But whether or not I'll go quite that far remains to be seen, as I still think that, visually, the user interface of Sierra is absolutely terrible; in that regard, I'm always glad to get back to Mavericks.

Of course, if I do fully install Sierra I'll always keep my eyes open for clues - if they exist - that'll still solve this sound issue. And if I do ever find or notice anything I'll certainly get in touch with you again.

I'm back in Mavericks.

Yes, I absolutely agree about log files.

There is, of course, a 'Provide Mail Feedback' facility in Mail itself, in the main menu - or at least there is in the Mavericks version. Looking at that, initially it collects some very basic stats about your e-mail account and then passes you over to an Apple webpage where you fill in your personal details and can enter a description of the problem. This might be the equivalent of what you yourself have used.

Something occurred to me this morning about this sound issue. Could it be that, somewhere along the line between Mavericks and Sierra, the OSX developers, by design, altered the sound alert in Mail so that it only sounded when you get a new message from someone or a reply from someone? In other words, altering the mechanism so that if you were sending to yourself - such as I've been doing, as my test method - you don't get the sound alert. Maybe they figured that if you're sending to yourself you'd always know that a reply would be imminent? I raise this as a possibility simply because you and a few others who've contributed to this long discussion have found the inbox alert to be intermittent.