Just completed an install of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) over the top of Mac OS X 10.5 – and it was painless.

Backed up the MacBook Pro using Time Machine and then ran the installation. All went very smoothly with no problems encountered. The full install took around 50 minutes and I seem to have recovered around 10 GB of hard-disk space!!!

Upon restart I did encounter two problems:

i) Mail complained about the OmniFocus plugin

Sent out a Tweet about this and within 30 mins got a reply from Omni telling me there was a new Snow Leopard version of OmniFocus online. Down loaded it, installed it, and all is fine.

ii) Mac OS X 10.6 kept asking to install Rosetta as it was needed by Microsoft Office 2004

It appears this was needed by the Microsoft Office 2004 update system. Discovered a very simple solution to fix this. I removed Office. (And I feel much better for that…)

One additional point, and I don’t really know if this was problem/coincidence or something else, but SpamSieve didn’t seem to open automatically when the first new email arrived. I shut down Mail, started SpamSieve, re-installed the Mail pluggin (command in the SpamSieve menu), re-started Mail and all now seems to be working.

So, bottom line (and famous last words), so far so good. And no ‘show-stopper’ problems encountered.

And one final point, the new ‘click and hold’ on icons in the dock has finally meant I have cleared all that rubbish (some 400 files) off my desktop as it was shocking to keep seeing those appear.

Anyway, go and grab you new copy of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) over at Apple.

I have posted about this before (post1, post2, post3, and post4) – yep, the dreaded PubSubAgent crash and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link)…

The upgrade from 10.5 to 10.5.1 (Amazon Link) fixed the crash on my home network, but I was still getting crashes on a clients networks (post4).

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

The problem was also limited to a MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) and was not seen on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) – post2.

Well, good news. After upgrading to 10.5.2 the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) is no longer giving PubSubAgent crashes when connected to the clients network which use a fairly strict firewall and a proxy… at last… no more annoying crash windows popping up…

OK, how many Time Machine backups can you have for one Mac? An interesting question?

Well, after recent events with a crashing MacBook (MacBook at Amazon), and the need to re-install Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) (read earlier post) I wondered how many Time Machine backups could be performed for one Mac?

I have a MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon), which I use in the office and at home, and up until now I have only had a Time Machine backup running at home. But, what would happen if I spent a number of days working on my MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) in the office, and didn’t get around to doing a backup when at home? All the office work would be lost…

Therefore I have decided to try and run Time Machine backups to disks at home and in the office, and so far so good. The backup appears to be working to the disk in the office and the disk at home. There is, however, one minor problem, I have to remember to go in to the Time Machine System Preferences and change the target disk between office and home, and back again, as I change locations. A bit of a ‘drag’, but I can live with it! (May be in the future this sort of problem will be solved by Apple by adding Time Machine to the ‘Location’ system?)

In early December MMISoftware upgraded a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon), belonging to one of our clients, to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link). This week, their machine had a major meltdown and needed a re-install of the operating system.

So, what happened to the machine? Well, I have now idea. The client said they had been using iPhoto when the machine locked up and they forced a re-start. When the machine re-booted it would get as far as the Dock launching, the Dock would then hang and crash, and the machine would not complete the boot.

I tried the usual things. I booted from a Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) install disk, ran disk verification and repaired permissions. No joy. I then tried removing the Dock preferences. Again, the machine would not boot. Finally I concluded that the only solution would be to re-install the system.

When I set the client up with the upgraded MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) I also set up Time Machine and instructed them on how to use it. Luckily, they had been using it! But had not done so in the last day before the crash.

The re-install went great, no problems, and when it got to the point of asking if I wanted to ‘import’ system settings and files from another Mac or a Time Machine backup I used the backup. It worked like a charm! I just left it run, and the machine was back…. and as far as we can tell only one day of work was lost (well, a day and a half if you include the time for the ‘re-install’).

Update: One ‘weird’ side-effect of the ‘re-install’ and reset from the Time Machine backup was the next Time Machine back up took forever and some 60 GB of data was copied over. Odd.

About a week ago I blogged (link to post) about a new piece of ‘Get Things Done’ (GTD – (GTD at Amazon)) software I was using called OmniFocus.

One thing I forgot to mention was that the OmniGroup release daily builds of the program. This is great. Everyday I install a new version of the program effortlessly using their ‘intsall’ system, and everyday I get a bunch of bug-fixes and new features. It is great to watch a program evolve like this in almost real-time. The guys at the OmniGroup are really ‘cranking-out-the-code’.

OmniFocus is from the OmniGroup and costs $79.95. If you order before 8th January, 2008 you will get 50% off.

In an earlier post I talked about one of the pieces of software I had re-installed when I upgraded a MacBook Pro (MacBook at Amazon) to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link)… namely, Skype.

As you most probably know Skype is a VoIP (voice over IP) application that allows you to talk to other Skype users on the internet, place calls to phones (at cheap rates), and send text (SMS) messages to mobile phones (actually this is a great feature as it means I can type my text messages on a full-sized keyboard…)

Now, the new install of Skype on the MacBook Pro (MacBook at Amazon) went smoothly, and I used the latest build from the Skype website (Download Skype). Skype worked a treat, no problems. However, over the last couple of weeks I read a number of reports online of how Skype wasn’t playing well with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link), and today I saw that there was a new version of Skype available that was ‘Leopard Friendly’…. unfortunately I didn’t read the small print in the article!

Using the ‘software check’ in Skype I downloaded the latest version, installed it, and guess what? It didn’t work! I then went back to the website and discovered they were talking about a ‘beta’ version that was ‘Leopard Friendly’, so I am now running the beta version and it seems pretty good to me…

So, watch out what you install and always read the small print!

Just came across a list of handy terminal commands over at Mac OS X Tips for changing the default behavior of applications under Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link).

Basically the ‘hints’ – I won’t list them here, go and look at the article ‘Terminal Commands for Hidden Settings in Leopard‘ – give the terminal commands for changing how a Mac application behaves/looks. These can be really handy – don’t like the new 3d dock? then change it… Stacks, the Finder, Spaces, Time Machine, iCal, and Menu Bar can also be ‘changed’ from their ‘default’ settings by following the instructions.

I just read an interesting bit over at Mac OS X Hints on how Time Machine is not doing a good job at backing up.

Well, I couldn’t resist testing the Hint and finding out what is going on with my back-ups.

I followed the instructions, and having changed the disk names etc. in the command, left it to run overnight (it does take a time to run…).

When I came back to my machine this morning I was HORRIFIED to find that there were 344 differences between the disk in the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) and the Time Machine back-up. 344!!! That is not a back up….

Actually, it is a back-up. In the 344 files there were 174 that were not in the back-up but on the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) hard-disk (HD), and the rest were in the back-up, but not on the HD(??).

When I actually looked at the files that were missing, i.e. I did a search through the list looking for the mention of my home directory (after all, what I am really concerned about is MY data, applications and the OS are ‘backed-up’ on the original install disks) I found 2 entries, and in both cases they were obscure files in caches for Xcode projects.

So, after the scare published in Mac OS X Hints I feel fairly happy with the back-up that Time Machine is keeping.

In two earlier posts (post 1 and post 2) I commented on how I had installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) and kept getting a ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting error. Well, I am now getting them on a MacBook Pro MacBook Pro at Amazon).

The install on the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon) was a completely clean install of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link). The disk was erased, re-partitioned, and 10.5 installed from scratch. The OS was upgraded to 10.5.1, and only selected software was installed (see earlier post – Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) – software that I use…). After all the installations I run a disk permissions fix, and just for good measure the daily, weekly and monthly cron jobs (sudo periodic daily, sudo periodic weekly and sudo periodic monthly).

All looked great. No more ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting problem, whilst on the MMISoftware network.

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

That is until today… today I was visiting a client and whilst at their office I was connected to the internet from behind their firewall and proxy, and what did I get (multiple times)? Yep, the old ‘PubSubAgent Quit’ problem…. this was odd. No sign of the problem whilst at MMISoftware on the MacBook Pro, and yet I get the ‘quit’ on a MacBook Pro when on a ‘strange’ network. I do hope Apple soon rolls out a fix for this as it was certainly not in 10.5.1.

In an earlier post I commented on how I had installed Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) and kept getting a ‘PubSubAgent’ quitting error.

I have now upgraded the MacBook (MacBook at Amazon) to 10.5.1 (Mac OS X 10.5 at Amazon) and so far I have not seen any…

PubSubAgent just keeps on quitting…

Could this be good news?

I have also done a completely clean install of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) (Amazon Link) on a MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro at Amazon). All looks OK. One thing that is odd though is since upgrading 10.5 to 10.5.1 on the MacBook Pro I have been unable to get ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ to work.

Update: Running the daily, weekly and monthly cron jobs (sudo periodic daily, sudo periodic weekly and sudo periodic monthly) seemed to fix the ‘Repair Disk Permissions’ problem mentioned above/