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Mac OS X Update 10.2.4 Resets

Posted by pudge on from the only-on-the-west-coast dept.

Oculus Habent writes "It may just be me, but 10.2.4 reset a number of settings on my computer, including icon sizes, window positions, and dock size and contents. Minor annoyances, but completely unnecessary. Is anyone else experiencing this?" As for me, Apple re-added some apps to my Dock and overwrote all my changes to httpd.conf (though it did back it up first) to add mod_rendezvous_apple. But those problems pale in comparison to some others: Anonymous Coward writes "If you upgraded your Mac desktop to 10.2.4 last weekend, check your date and time. Many users have suddenly found it to be 4:00 PM, December 31, 1969 again. Apparently, this happens whenever they are shut down or restarted, and resetting the motherboard and/or the PRAM doesn't fix it. Complaints have been piling up at Apple.com and prices for batteries have been skyrocketing - but relax. It's not your battery!"

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. zero problems for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everything worked fine for me. Nothing reset, no changes to the Dock. I don't know if it makes a difference but I downloaded the tar file directly and ran the update later, rather than using Software Update.

    Haven't seen any time/date changes, but my clock is set by NTP anyway.

    PS: One thing I like to do before any major update is run something like "find -s / > /tmp/filelist" to get a list of all files and dates. Then run it again after the update and diff the two lists. That will show you httpd.conf changed, for instance. Also it's just interesting to see what files change on the machine as I learn about the OS. You can also get lists of files from the archive itself or from the "bill of materials" file ("man lsbom") after installation.

    PPS: does anybody know what the file /iNode12022737 is for? I keep seeing files like that in the root dir...

  2. It's like the Y2K bug... by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 5, Funny

    The cause of all these problems is simple, and I'm amazed that Apple overlooked it. The new version number, 10.2.4, overruns the 11-bit signed integer field that Apple devotes to the version numbers for their operating systems. This causes the system to think it's version -10.2.4, and extrapolating on the rate of Apple software releases allows one to easily calculate the date that this release should have taken place: Version 1.0.0 in 1984 and Version 10.2.3 in 2003 gives version -10.2.4 to be precisely January 1, 1970. The 1969 dates are due to a roundoff error, and only occur in G3s without Altivec support.

    As no version earlier than OS 8 has network time support, the new "old" system does not attempt to update from a network time server. The reverted files and dock icons are simply the computer's attempt to show the files as they exist at the "current" time.

    A patch may take awhile, due to the difficulty of updating all the old system routines that use the 11-bit signed int format.

    --
    I hereby place the above post in the public domain.