Apple

I'm being asked to switch iBooks (they are identical units but one has a working backlight) and I can't seem to get Apple Software Update to work. I need it too otherwise I can't run the migration utility.
In a blue DV iBook with a fresh 10.3 install and a working wired internet connection, Software Update will time out and give error -1001. My current ibook does it too and this has been tested on multiple ethernet cables and switch ports. I last knew it worked about three months ago. I have run a permissions fix but if it's not working on a fresh install I am suspicious.

Would manually downloading the 10.3.9 combo updater be a sufficient workaround? http://support.apple.com/downloads/Mac_ ... ate_10_3_9

(Sorry I can't be of greater assistance. It's been a long time since I last ran Panther.)

You are still lucky. I did the same with my iMac G5. It installed the update but the iMac hanged after reboot.

I finally downloaded combo updates and installed them manually step by step (10.3.5->10.3.6, 10.3.6->10.3.7 and so on).

Was there a particular reason why you chose not to run the single step 10.3.0 -> 10.3.9 combo update?

Well that works in terms of updating but that does not load the rest of the updates and thus I'm not sure if I can perform the migration cleanly.

My thinking was that perhaps getting to 10.3.9 might clear whatever problem was generating the -1001 error, and that any secondary updates (like Quicktime, iTunes, security updates) that might be needed would be downloadable after that. Keep in mind, though, that some of the secondary updates probably are included in the 10.3.9 combo updater. If the 10.3.9 update clears the error, then any secondary updates should subsequently download independently.

Do you get a -1001 error if you run software update on the command line (analogous to using "inst" vs "swmgr" in IRIX, e.g. by using "softwareupdate -l" or "softwareupdate -d")? For example, if the problem is something with the downloading process itself, "softwareupdate -l" should still tell you what updates you need, and then you would be able to download them manually.

Another idea: are you using a wireless connection? Try disabling Airport and using an ethernet connection instead.

It's a wired connection to the wall. AirPort isn't connected.
What really confuses me is that it's not working either on the old iBook which only three months ago was grabbing updates no problem. I'll try using it at another internet connection today.

Nope. On a different internet connection it's still the same. Weird.

Hi Pentium.

Based upon your post, this evening I booted my MDD G4 into 10.3.9 and tested the Apple Software Update feature. It gives the error dialogue Software Update can't connect to the Update Server.

This makes me think the Mac OS X 10.3.9 Software Update server is down because I am able to surf the internet fine using the Opera browser on the system and I can even ping apple.com

I just went poking around the Panther forum over at Apple Support, and it looks like a bunch of people have been running into this recently. Maybe Apple quietly discontinued automatic updates for Panther, or perhaps the Panther update server broke, and no one at Apple has noticed yet. https://discussions.apple.com/community ... nd_earlier

The suspicion is that Software Update has been disabled for all versions of OS X prior to 10.4; 10.2 doesn't work either anymore, but 10.4 still does at least for now. You can still fetch the updates manually, but given that Apple has expunged much of their pre-OS X software, who knows for how long. I've started making image dumps of my 10.4 systems so that I don't have to rely on Software Update anymore if they need to be rebuilt.

Why not just select the option in Software Update to download & keep package?

I already have them all downloaded anyway. The problem is applying them in order, and it's a slow process, so I'd rather just blast a disk image back.

Well ball, that confirms my suspicion that Apple is cutting off people from updating their older systems.
Well I'll just have to figure out how to do imaging.

Well, they can still update, but they have to download the updates manually. Inconvenient, sure, but it's not closing the door. You can still download System 6, after all. If you use the cumulative (aka "Combo") updaters, it's not too horrible.

That said, if the hardware is the same, re-imaging is usually faster than running a fresh install, reloading your apps, and patching stuff.

Probably the fastest way to create an image from an old iBook is to use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper on a fast Mac, with the iBook connected in Firewire Target Mode, assuming that it's a Firewire Mac, of course. Both support block level imaging and incremental imaging, and both have good documentation. You can also run those tools under Panther, if you find older versions of them. You can also use Apple's Disk Utility to make an image, but it usually takes a little longer to run and has fewer options. Also, you can't use Apple's Disk Utility to clone the boot drive, so you'd need to run it from either an OS X installation CD or by booting from another disk.

I'm trying the disk utility method but the destination drive just idles and eventually spins down after a while.

You might try to disable sleep, both for the computer and for the drives. It might also make sense to try doing a block copy with Carbon Copy Cloner. It will still take a while (hours, with verification), but it does go a bit faster than the Disk Utility method. The main disadvantage is that you would need to use Firewire target mode and boot from another Mac.

I remember using hdiutil(1) and asr(8) [Apple Software Restore] to create backup images of disks and restore them when I upgraded to larger disks in my powerbooks. The process wasn't entirely obvious, because asr needs to "add file checksums" to the image before you restore it. (Maybe this step was really optional but it seemed like a good idea). So the image file needed to be in a particular [uncompressed] format until checksums were added. I think it took about an hour to image a 100GB disk and restore it into a 300GB.

Carbon Copy Cloner is basically a gui shell that invokes those commands, or maybe "ditto", too. I had a bookmark to a page where the CCC folks went into detail regarding the exact command lines that were used, but they've reorganized their site, and now I can't find it any more. Maybe the info is still out there, but I don't have the time to go sleuthing today.