Apple Pulls 10.2.8 Update

physicsnerd writes "Apple has apparently pulled the Mac OS X 10.2.8 update from Software Update. The standalone updates have also been pulled. There have been reports of problems with 10.2.8 on iMacs and eMacs." People have also reported network problems.

Comments

Apple please post security fixes then QA rest

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear Apple's tried to hurry this update through to make a package of all the recent security fixes along with standard updates. Mistake! They should have released the security fixes asap and separately, and spent as long as required to test the rest.

Battery Timer

[cmason32]

The biggest "feature" of 10.2.8 for me was the battery timer was completely messed up. I removed the plug and the timer indicated there was 1:50 left, however, the battery actually lasted over 3 hours while multi-tasking AND charging my iPod. I let the battery run all the way down to let it recalibrate - and though the timer indicator is higher than it was last night, it is still not as high as before I installed the update. I have read that other people have had similar problems, too.

It doesn't appear that the battery time itself was affected, just the way it calculates how much time is left.

This update was a disaster for me

[babbage]

Like a lot of other people, this update seems to have completely screwed up ethernet networking for me. A lot of the reports I've read (Apple's site Slashdot comment, MacFixit article, MacSlash, etc) suggest that people with dual processor G4s running 400-500mhz are having a lot of problems, and a broken driver for the Intel gigabit ethernet chipset has been blamed -- though I haven't seen anything that conclusively says that this component is at fault. Other reports have come from people running faster G4s & PowerBooks, so if the Intel ethernet driver is a cause, it doesn't seem to be the only cause. All I can say personally is that my dual G4/450mhz is definitely messed up right now.

The best remedy I've seen so far is to restore the pre-10.2.8 version of the AppleGMACEthernet ethernet driver. If you can -- and for most people it'll be too late for this advice to do any good -- make a backup of the .kext driver before updgrading to 10.2.8, then use that to rebuild is things go awry. For everyone else, your best bet is to download it from Andrew McPherson's MIT site, either by establishing a dialup connection, by booting into OS9 and getting it from there, or by grabbing it with another machine and transferring it to your broken Mac by e.g. a burned CD, a Zip disc, etc.

Here are the repair steps, as slightly modified from McPherson's suggestion at Apple's site:

mkdir ~/enet_backup
cd ~/enet_backup
wget http://web.mit.edu/apm/www/AppleGMACEthernet.tar.g z
# note -- doing the above without network access is left
# as an exercise for the reader. i happen to have a flash
# card reader, so can transfer it that way, but I was
# getting pretty desperate before that occurred to me.
# others might want to try burning a CD, or getting
# online from OS9, or a zip disc, or...
# ...in any case, `wget` is about the only method that is
# almost guaranteed NOT to work right now...

cd /System/Library/Extensions
sudo mv AppleGMACEthernet.kext ~/enet_backup
sudo cp -r ~/enet_backup/AppleGMACEthernet.tar.gz .
sudo tar -zxvf AppleGMACEthernet.tar.gz
sudo chown -R root:wheel AppleGMACEthernet.kext
cd ..
sudo mv Extensions.kextcache ~/enet_backup/
sudo mv Extensions.mkext ~/enet_backup/
sudo shutdown -r now

This advice is close to that which McPherson suggested, but he recommended deleting the broken driver, and the commands I give above make a backup just in case. If all goes well you may remove that ~/enet_backup directory, but I have a hunch that somehow you're going to have to end up re-installing it, so keeping a copy around seems prudent to me -- and it's not like it even takes up that much space (well under a megabyte).

Other people have reported success with other solutions. One proposal was to run the command "ifconfig en0 media autoselect", but in my case that didn't work. Others have suggested rebooting, zapping the PRAM a few times, then letting the machine boot again; others have said that that didn't work either.

Replacing the driver, as described above, seems to be the remedy that has had the most success for the most users -- but even still, it isn't working for everybody. In my case, it has allowed me to reconnect to my PPPoE/

Revolution 7.1

[QuantumSpritz]

DO NOT INSTALL IF YOU HAVE A REVOLUTION 7.1 SOUND CARD INSTALLED! The update disables the driver, because the .kext driver specifies a Darwin version below that of OS 10.2.8 I wonder what they'll call the 10.2.8 update when they re-release it? 10.2.8.1? This brings them awfully close to 10.3, and they usually roll some fixes in to the old OS when they release a new one.