Apple Releases OS X 10.4.2 Update

kenthorvath was one of many readers to note that "Apple has quietly released an update for OS X Tiger. New features include a widget manager for dashboard and some 200 bug fixes and enhancements."

Comments

Re:Wait...

[hitchhikerjim]

Apple has always done that. That's one of the main reasons I can't deploy OSX in any enterprise server environment I run. I'd like to -- but they can't figure out how to treat the OS like a real enterprise company does.

The other issue is that while they give lip-service to supporting old versions, they tend not to come out with security patches for anything but the latest version -- or 1 or 2 releases back at best. Sun, Redhat and SGI would never get away with that.

Working around the hotfiles_evict problem

[Jimithing DMB]

The easiest way to work around hotfiles_evict is to free up some space on the drive. The big catch is that the freespace must have a contiguous block large enough to store the file which is being evicted from the hotfiles area.

I had the hotfiles_evict problem on a G4 tower at work. The boot drive was about 98% full. After moving some files onto an external FireWire drive I got down to about 90% full. The problem remained. I then moved more stuff until I got down to about 80% full.

Between the 90 and 80 mark I also disabled journalling on the volume. This, I think, is the easiest way to fix it. Disabling journalling also disables hotfiles and therefore the update daemon will no longer try to manage the hotfiles store.

I haven't seen the problem resurface yet. Note that this was a DP G4 and so update only ate 100% of one CPU (barely noticeable). What I did notice was the fact that my boot drive suddenly had ZERO freespace because the system.log grew to about 6 GB. Yes, I know, this actually exacerbates the problem.

I can only hope that 10.4.2 fixes the issue. I'll probably re-enable journaling and see what happens.

Also, speaking of drive freespace: There is apparently a known flaw in HFS+ with respect to contiguous freespace. When allocating new space for the catalog a 4 MB block of contiguous freespace is required. If you don't have a 4 MB block of contiguous freespace then apparently there is a bug whereby 4 MB will be allocated potentially overtop another portion of the catalog or overtop some file's data. Not good. Best advice from what I've gathered is to never let a volume be more than 80% full. Ever.

Re:need to fix spolight too

[venicebeach]

It's actually up to the widget to turn off (or not) when Dashboard is hidden. Apple recommends that "when Dashboard is hidden, your widget should not consume any CPU time or network resources", but you can write the widgets to keep running in the background if you wish. Widgets are able to tell if the Dashboard is active or not, but the Dashboard never really quits; like the Dock, it's running even when hidden.

See the Dashboard Programming Guide.

Re:Please report bugs, folks!

[TheRaven64]

until they start communicating with people who file bug reports, people are going to keep complaining in public forums.

They do communicate. I've filed bugs with Apple, had them contact me for additional information and to test fixes.