Tiger as primary system: When?

[fryke]

With every new betatest phase of OS X, there comes the point when I want to test it against my 'real' system, to see what actually _working_ with it is going to be like. Before 8A323, I didn't think that moment had come yet. Well _actually_, I think it's still a bit early.

Well: I've chosen to jump into the cold water now. Backed up my drive and installed 8A323 (and then 8A323A) on my PowerBook. I upgraded it (which with earlier builds led to severe problems sometimes, such as no networking etc.) and it works fine.

Well, _fine_ would probably be the wrong term. Let's say: My data's still here. My settings are, too. There's the occasional graphical glitch (better in 8A323A than before), but I can live with that.

Spotlight's great. I love it in E-Mail.

Any questions?

[Zammy-Sam]

I wonder how you will "update" the system once there is a newer build? Will you need to completely erase the disk and reinstall or would something like SU work?

[fryke]

Newer builds don't come in Software Update, normally (just small patches to test SU, mostly doing nothing, although this last one did...). In Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar and Panther, I usually did the following process when a new build was available:

1.) Back up the working system (CCC or something, anything really just make sure I have a backup).
2.) Do a normal upgrade to the new build, just as if you'd upgrade from Jaguar to Panther.
3.) If that works, everything's fine, if it breaks/stalls/panicks... ->
4.) Clean install the new build and get my home folder content as well as apps and prefs etc. from the backup.

Sure, that last step sounds annoying, but once you're accustomed to it, it's a rather good way of solving problems on final systems, too. Clean installing OS X doesn't take very long (whether it's a final build or a test build) and having a current backup is a must for me, anyway. If you've done it a few times, you know what exactly is needed for your system to be back up where you want it...

Apple usually _doesn't_ allow Final Candidate and Final versions to upgrade earlier test builds. So _then_ I'll have to do step 4) anyway. But I think that the arrival of a new big version of the cats is the best chance to clean up one's system, anyway - and even if you're on Panther when Tiger is released, I'd suggest doing what I do, i.e. backup, erase your harddrive, clean install Tiger and bring back what you need from the backup. This way you can also get rid of stuff that you didn't even _know_ you still had on your system (taking space you'd have free...).

[chevy]

As you have a large experience with it, would you mind writing a short [How To] smart backup your complete Mac (applications, multiple users...). Because, as I do it only each second year, I tend to have to spend a lot of time to fine tune what I am doing each time and this takes my days before I have everything under control again. My two major problems are other users and applications (indeed the library part of applications).

[fryke]

Well... Basically there's the easy and the difficult part.

And for users who, like in OS 9 and earlier, put things all over the harddrive, the following list does not apply. If you're such a person, just make sure you REMEMBER where you've put your stuff. Chaotic people, those.

For backing up, I advise to backup everything. CCC to an image, for example. But other backup solutions can achieve the same. Takes a while, but you've _got_ everything backed up afterwards.

Then you install the system. Easy, too.

You then best setup the users with the _same_ shortnames as before (unless you've gotta add some) and give them the same rights etc. as before the reinstallation.

Then you replace the contents of the new home folders with the stuff in the backup. Everything. You can do this in the Finder (by loggin' in as the user in question to keep the user rights intact) directly. Just make sure you logout right after the copying is complete, so no application tries to overwrite the prefs files you just copied over.

After all the users are in place, there's basically the following:

1.) /Applications/
You just choose any third-party application in the backup's /Applications folder and hit Cmd-C. Go to the new installation's apps folder and hit Cmd-V. Same for apps in the /Applications/Utilities folder.

2.) /Library/Application Support/
You'll find a lot of stuff here. Basically, copy everything over that seems to belong to applications you still intend to use. The folders are named after the developing companies, AFAIK. Depending on the installed apps, you might also want to check whether there's /System/Library/Application Support/. On my systems, there isn't such a folder. So nothing to copy.

3.) Check the applications and settings. If the applications don't want to run, you have to reinstall them. Don't have to delete them, usually, just install them over the already installed versions. There simply _are_ some apps that don't "behave" well here. Xpress, as far as I know, needs to be reinstalled, for example.

4.) Fink and other UNIX stuff
I don't know about fink. Maybe there's a way to just copy things over (_should_ be in my opinion), but probably you'll need a newer version of fink for a newer OS X version and you maybe even want to recompile the stuff with the newer GCC version?
Your hand-tooled configuration files for Apache and other things, you'll want to just copy over from the backup.

I guess my way of backing up and reinstalling isn't ever going to be simple, since it basically mixes a fresh install with several 'parts' from your old system (although nothing that could hurt the new system) - and those depend on the user, really.

[ylon]

Yes, I can vouch for what Fryke has outlined. I just did this recently (2 weeks ago) and it went without a hitch and was done within just about 2-3 hours. Quite a smooth transition as long as you have things basically in the right place.

[chevy]

I used a similar method to move all accounts from one Mac to another, with one difference: I created one zip file for each users' account to be able to port users independently.

BTW most of my applications are installed on another disk, freeing room on my main disk for the system.

[ylon]

Oh, one more note to amend what Fryke had mentioned about logging out just as soon as you're done copying. I would advise that you actually log on as an admin user that previously did not exist that you create and perform the copying that way. You can then either run Disk Utility and repair permissions, or I prefer just to jump into bash and `chown -R user_short_name:user_short_name /Users/user_short_name` so that things are happily owned by the right (likely new) uid (user id).