Tiger and Upgrade Best Practices

by | Feb 14, 2014 | Uncategorized

Tiger and Upgrade Best Practices

  • NOTE: If you are using OpenAFS 1.2.11-13 (lab kit and private install uses this) or 1.3.8x these are specific for 10.3 only and you should wait until a 10.4 (Tiger) specific version of OpenAFS is released (watch www.openafs.org).

It is a good time to remember some best practices which should used during any upgrade. Please do not upgrade any lab kits as ITD has not yet qualified Tiger for the lab environment. We will be working quickly on qualification.

  1. Always look at the system requirements before upgrading.
    • NOTE: Most of the install media for Apple software is now DVD unless you buy CD media sets specifically. If the machine does not have a DVD drive with all the firmware updates there might be difficulties doing the install.
  2. Always backup AT LEAST the Users folder before upgrading. Copy it to a cd, dvd or another hard disk just in case.
  3. If you can stand to wait, do your upgrade sometime next week after watching www.macsurfer.com for any issues which might impact you.
  4. Run all the software updates for 10.3 before upgrading if you plan to do a dirty install.
  5. Run Disk Utility and Repair Permissions before upgrading anything.
  6. Boot from the new install DVD and run Disk Tools from the Installer menu to Repair disk before updating.
  7. What is the best kind of install to make? After you backup your data, Apple usually has 3 types of installs to choose from:
    1. Easy – which is the default an is a “dirty” install over top of the current os. This is the least amount of work and should be ok in most situations.
    2. Customized using Archive and Install with save settings – this creates “Previous System” folder and installs a new “factory fresh” System folder but keeps user and system preferences (ip setting, etc.) and most installed applications. NOTE: this install replaces the entire BSD subsystem so if you have any bsd apps installed (mysql, postgress, majordomo, php, etc.) or have made changes to apache, ldap, sasl or the like then these will be replaced.
    3. Format and install – this one **destroys everything** on your hard disk and puts on the new OS only. You must reload all your data and reinstall all your applications. This is the most work for you as you have to remember to save everything and find those application cds. However sometimes you just want a clean start or if something goes wrong with a dirty install you might want to use this option.

So what type of install should you pick. In general try the easy install unless you have reason to believe there will be problems. If there are problems with the easy install or if you want to be safe on compatibility go with Customized using Archive and Install with save settings. You might have to reinstall or reconfigure some applications.

  • Run Software Update after the install as there might be patches for security, etc.
  • Make sure your virus software is updated or reinstalled with latest virus defs. after the install.

These tips should help everyone have an easy transition to the latest OS.