x
SonOfSmawg 14 April 2002

A couple of days ago, I decided to do a clean-up on my Mac. My hard storage consists of six 10Gb partitions. With a little thought, I decided I'd do it this way ...
My first partition is my boot drive. I put every thing that I want to keep on my 2nd partition. I install OS 9.0.2 on my other 4 partitions from my CD. I then D/L OS 9.1 and install it on partitions 4, 5, & 6. Then I D/L OS 9.2.1 and install it on 5 & 6. Then I D/L 9.2.2 and install it on #6. This way, if anything goes wrong with any of the updates, I always have a back-up before any possible problem, without having to re-download on my 56k modem. Then, once I have my new, complete OS 9.2.2 on partition 6, install all of the updates on partition 3, re-boot from partition 3, trash everything on partition1, then copy everything from partition 6 onto partition 1. Voila ... fresh, up-to-date OS on my boot drive. Then, make 3 folders on my desktop. Copy everything from partition 4, put it in a folder, add the OS 9.1 installer, label it "My OS 9.1". Do the same for partitions 5 & 6. Then trash everything on partitions 3, 4, 5, & 6. Take all 3 folders and store them on partition 6 (which never gets used). This way, I have OS 9.0.2 on CD, and OS 9.1, OS 9.2.1, and 9.2.2 stored on my harddrive, complete with their respective installers. Theoretically, as long as my harddrive never crashes to the point of needing to be completely formatted and partitioned, I will always have each version of OS9.
Well, that all sounds hunky-dory, but...
I installed OS 9.0.2 on partitions 3 through 6, no prob. I downloaded and installed OS 9.1 on partitions 4 through 6, no prob. I downloaded OS 9.2.1 ... "internal file system error" -127. Hmmm ... what the f**k does that mean? Kept it, didn't install it. I downloaded OS 9.2.2 ... error -67 ... something to do with shrink wrap engine something or other. WTF? Kept it, didn't install it. Thought it best to consult with the pros on RO before doing anything with these two OS update files.
SOOO ... now what? Are these relevant errors? Can anyone tell me specifically what these errors are? I did a search but came up empty-handed. Should I try installing them, since I do have backups, or will that f**k things up royally? Should I trash them and re-download them (together, over 100MB on a 56k modem!), or will I probably get the same errors?
I ran Disk First Aid, and it found no problems. Does anyone have absolute, professional advice on what I should do? Otherwise, I'll end-up using my own twisted logic ... see "THE BUILD" and "THE BUILD II" to see where that gets me! ROTFLMFAO ...

Comments

Opus2000 Mon, 04/15/2002 - 08:10

SOS....Why do you always take the most impossible paths to get to a simple destination? :roll:
That has got to be the most convoluted way of installing an OS on a Mac I have ever heard of!!!
The only thing I can think of is that your install paths are getting corrupted somehow..
I'm sorry to say I am of no help on this matter since I usually do one step upgrades on a single partitioned drive and not multi-partitions like yours
Opus

Jon Best Mon, 04/15/2002 - 08:33

Yow. From this end, it just looks like all you are doing is *ensuring* that you have to do, what, 10 installs, whether it works out smoothly or not! If you want to be safe, copy your boot drive onto another partition, back it up on CD, and just start the upgrade path on your boot drive. You can always go back to square one, probably twice, and you still spent less time...

SonOfSmawg Mon, 04/15/2002 - 09:52

Let me clarify...
The only part of this that is time-consuming is the downloading! Once I have the installer, it only takes 5 minutes to do a custom installation. OS 9.0.2 was installed from CD ... and all I had to do was drag and drop the contents from one partition to the others ... only took 5 minutes max, total. OS 9.1 downloaded just fine, I ran the installer 3 times, to put onto partitions 4, 5, & 6. That took about 10 minutes. Once I get a "good" download of updates 9.2.1 and 9.2.2, they'll only take a matter of minutes to install. After that, the last few functions are just drag and drop. If I had "good" installers, I could do the whole thing, from start to finish, in less than a half hour. The time-consuming part is in the downloading ... for instance JUST downloading the 9.2.1 update takes 4 1/2 hours! That's why I'm doing the whole procedure the way that I am ... so I don't mess something up and have to re-download everything!
My procedure isn't what I'm asking help with ... that part's easy, takes very little time, and in the end will give me copies of all of the individual OS9 operating systems. My question is about the errors! I have completed installers of the OS 9.2.1 and OS 9.2.2 updates sitting on my desktop, and I need to know if they are in any way "bad" or "corrupted". If those errors are "bad juju", then perhaps I need to trash them and re-download (AARRRGGGGHHHHH). But, I don't know, if I download them again, if the same errors will occur. Those error messages came up at the end of the downloads, once the downloads were completed. So, I need to know if those error messages mean that perhaps there is a problem in the files within those downloads that make them unuseable, or if they are typical BS messages that sometimes come up and the files are fine. Does anyone know what these error messages actually mean???
Aaahhhh ... fuck it. I have to go take care of a few things today. So, I'm going to download the OS 9.2.1 update again, while I'm gone, and see if I get the same error message. If I don't, kewl. If I do, then I guess I'll know that there is definately some sort of a problem. I'll hang-on to the other two files just in case, too, for now. I'll let you know what happens later today.

SonOfSmawg Tue, 04/16/2002 - 20:19

PLEASE, somebody help! I downloaded the OS 9.2.1 update again (82Mb!), and got the same damn error...
"The disk "Mac OS 9.2.1 Update" cannot be used, because an error of type -127 occured."
Isn't there anyone on RO who knows about Macs??? Hmmm, maybe we need an "Apple" forum in DAWworld, and a moderator for it. I'm going to talk to Chris about it when he comes back.

anonymous Thu, 04/18/2002 - 18:02

Dude,

Sorry to hear about your problems but I have to agree with some of the other posters, doing all those upgrades may very well result in corruption. In particular 9.2 and above don't take well. If you need to narrow it down to 2 keep a 9.04 build and a 9.22. You should get them from regular install CD's.
One of several things to remember when running a mac os updater is to make sure the extension manager is set to all Mac OS extensions, then restart.

Getting a build stable is more a function of debugging the extensions set and control panels + machine settings than anything else (excluding ROM Firmware upgrades particular to certain models). You have to be a little more specific on your setup . What Mac model, ram, which hard drive, video card, other pci cards, usb devices, etc.? Leaving a Wacom tablet plugged into certain machines for instance can screw up your machine if the driver isn't loading with the system.

Is the drive formatted with Apple's Drive setup, hopefully the latest version? Third party formatters can be problematic when there's a OS update.

Also expect more problems with that many partitions. ATA drives are cheap and fast enough to avoid that many partitions.

If you must use those OS updaters at least check the drive with a good diagnostic after each install, I reccomend Disk Warrior. You might also trying to make sure that you're not booting off the partition you're updating.

good luck

raregroove

aka William Heagy
Macadvice
Apple Solutions Expert
ASPN Member

x

User login