Security Update 2006003: What a disaster &A#JD1Tg!d8

"William R. Walsh"

1) An advocacy group is not exactly the best place to ask this question. I suggest: comp.sys.mac.system

2) You need to keep up with my 'Mac Security: Weekly Summary' articles. I discussed this in somewhat gory detail over a week ago.

3) The best free location to read about the issues that have come up is: They have a section of the website dedicated to the update. Another great site for HELP as well as reports is MacFixIt. But they only give you one or two days worth of news on their site for free. To get deeper into their site where they have their collections of past posts and their tutorials, etc., you have to join up. As a Mac geek I have been a member for several years and like it. You get free membership if you are a DotMac member. It's well worth it.

My general impression is that the problems people are having with this security update are typical, which is to say they are scattered all over the map, with no single prominent problem. Therefore, the update is bringing out the consequences of a pre-existing condition, or the computer is left in an unstable state after the update and may be salvageable.

So here is my usual litany of things to do BEFORE and AFTER you perform any update of any kind:

BEFORE: ------- A) Make a backup. (This is the #1 rule of computing. You snooze, you lose).

B) Repair your hard drive. There are lots of ways: 1) Run Disk Utility. While you're there, jump to C and repair your permissions. 2) Boot off your Mac OS X installation CD-DVD and run Disk Utility 3) Boot into single user mode (command-s) held down at boot, and run fsck. 4) Get the FREE CLI application Applejack. Once installed you boot into single user mode (command-s held down at boot) and follow the instructions on the screen. It is dirt easy. What is brilliant about this application is that it not only does fsck, and repairs your permissions, but it segregates bad permission files, dumps your cache files (which are often a source of system chaos) and all your virtual memory. I love it. 5) There are commercial repair programs like TechTool Pro and Drive10. But my favorite is DiskWarrior. Buy it with a bootable CD. Then you can boot off the CD and repair all your volumes, including your boot volume. It will fix things nothing else can.

C) Repair your permissions. It is amazing what a mess your permissions can be in, and the chaos that can result when you install an update on top of it. Options: 1) Run Disk Utility. 2) Boot from your installation CD-DVD and run Disk Utility. 3) Do it inside Applejack.

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Reboot into safe mode. (Hold down the shift key when booting and logging in).

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Run the updater. The updater may itself force a reboot. Let it. Don't bother with safe mode at that point.

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AFTER: ------

Reboot again. I keep reading about folks who have their problems solved simply by one more reboot. It can't hurt.

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1) IMMEDIATELY repair your permissions again. It is so common for installations of any kind to damage permissions. I don't know why. It seems to be a price of having the security built into Unix, for now. Wrecked permissions can cause major system problems.

2) If problems still exist, try a disk repair.

3) If all else fails: Restore your system with your backup.

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Sometimes the problem after an update is a single corrupted system component. There is no way you are going to test the actual Mac OS X system. But you can certainly test things you have added on, such as startup items, contextual menu modules, fonts, preference panes, internet plugins, iTunes plug-ins, menu extras, screensavers and QuickTime modules. Happily you can control all of these items with a freeware application called Diablotin. Similar to old Conflict Catcher from clbuttic Mac OS, you turn stuff off, reboot or relogin, depending on when the item loads, see if the problem is gone, etc.

For deeper stuff, again check out Macintouch and MacFixIt.

Hope that helps.

-- Fortune Magazine, 11-29-05: What's your computer setup today? Frederick Brooks: I happily use a Macintosh. It's not been equalled for ease of use, and I want my computer to be a tool, not a challenge. Frederick Brooks is the author of 'The Mythical Man Month'. He spearheaded the movement to modernize computer software engineering in 1975