Security Update 2005-007 v.1.1 (#4): Instructions for getting the update off your Mac; Safari, Mail.app issues; more
Instructions for getting Security Update 2005-007 off your Mac Several users have experienced such critical issues with Security Update 2005-007 that they wish to revert to a system state prior to the update.
As briefly noted earlier in the week, this can be accomplished via the following process; adapted from our tutorial on reverting to a previous iteration of Mac OS X. Note, however, that reverting your system will remove any refinements brought by the update and leave your system open to potential vulnerabilities.
First, make a backup of your current Mac OS X installation with the Security Update applied, problematic as it may be. If there is an issue along the way, your valuable data will be safely intact in its current form.
Next, you'll need to perform an Archive and Install process to remove all of the Security Update's (and potentially problem-causing) components, and replace them with the components of a fresh copy provided by the Mac OS X disc that shipped with your system, or a retail Mac OS X disc. Unfortunately, this means you will lose some system settings and some or all third-party system add-ons.
To begin the process, insert your Mac OS X CD or DVD, as indicated above. Restart your machine and hold down the "C" key to boot from the newly inserted disc. Follow the on-screen instructions, and after accepting the license agreement, click "Options." Select "Archive and Install," and check the "Preserve User and Network Settings" option if you'd like to do so.
After the installation process is complete, you will be left with an earlier Mac OS X system that (hopefully) does not suffer from the problems generated by the Security Update. Use Software Update or Apple's download page to download the update that brings your system to a state directly prior to the Security Update (Mac OS X 10.3.9 or Mac OS X 10.4.2).
Safari issues A number of users report issues with Safari -- particularly slow page loading -- after applying Security Update 2005-007 1.1.
Scott Drummery writes:
"I didn't install the previous security update 1.0, but I did update with 1.1. Before the update, my system was running very nicely-no crashes at all for several days. Much better than 10.3.9. Now after the update, Safari is very unstable. I can absolutely crash it every time I enter text into a web page field and hit return. The Google search field also, but the address field. I have repaired permissions and still have the problem, but there were many incorrect permissions in the ./usr/bin/man/ directory."
MacFixIt reader Ryan adds "I have a iMac G5 and I'm running 10.4.2. While installing Security Update 2005-007 my computer crashed. Originally it took an hour to reboot, but I have been tinkering with it - repairing permissions, running Cacheout and OnyX to do some maintenance. Reinstalled the 2005-007 V1 update and also installed v1.1 update. My system still seems more sluggish than it used to before the update although not nearly as severe as when I originally restarted. I have not run all of my applications yet, but instead have been backing up important data to my external hard drive. It seems that the one thing that completely messes up my system now is Safari. When I launch the application my entire computer freezes and it takes about 2-3 minutes for a single web page to load on a DSL connection. (Same problem does not occur with Internet Explorer). In addition all of my Safari book marks are gone."
Mail.app issues Users also report a re-occurence of Mail.app sending issues after the update.
One reader writes:
"Ever since installing security update--my apple mail has been problematic and I read the same problem others are having on apple bulletin boards.
"I can send mail only intermittently. I get the following error code 'This message could not be delivered and will remain in your Outbox until it can be delivered.Verify that you have addressed this message correctly. Check your SMTP server settings in Mail Preferences and verify any advanced settings with your system administrator.'
Bluetooth connectivity lost Peter Nelson reports a loss of Bluetooth connectivity:
"After updating to Security Update 2005-007 v.1.1 I no longer have Bluetooth connectivity. Paired devices are no longer 'seen' and devices can not be found for re-pairing."
Improvement: Mail.app no longer persistently asking for password MacFixIt reader Gavin reports that a pre-exisitng issue where Mail.app persistently asked for saved passwords was resolved with Security Update 2005-007.
"I was very pleased to note after installing SU v 1.1 that Mail App no longer requires my server password to access new mail."
Sherlock issues A few users report issues with Sherlock being unable to properly search after the update.
In some cases, the solution for this issue is to navigate to the directory ~/Library/Caches/Sherlock/Web Foundation and delete all folders therein.
Third-party applications
QuickMail font conflict Richard Spensley reports a QuickMail font conflict apparent after Security Update 2005-007 which was resolved by discontinuing use of a specific font style:
"I applied the Security Update this morning and ran into problems with Outpsring's QuickMail 3.5.2. It would not start up at all and I suspected that it may be font-related so I disabled Suitcase but that did not work. When I looked on Macfixit I saw the advice about font issues so I tried removing the "com.apple.ATS" folder - this did not work either. The Console crash log seemed to point towards a font problem
"I could not think what to do so, in the end, I removed the QuickMail Preferences folder from it's normal location. QuickMail then started fine (albeit without my prefs). I put the Prefs back, QuickMail crashed. I removed just the "QM Pro Client Prefs" and it started fine, with the correct account info, I just needed to go through and set my prefs for views, behaviour, fonts - ah, fonts! As soon as I set my font preferences back to the way I usually have them (Verdana as the list view and Anti-aliasing on) and opened the Inbox, QuickMail crashed again! If I turned off Anti-aliasing then QuickMail worked fine. If I changed the font to something else and turned Anti-aliasing on again then it also worked fine.
"So, it appears, on my system at least, that the Anti-aliasing of Verdana (specifically) in QuickMail was causing the problem. Go figure!"
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Previous Coverage:- Apple releases Security Update 2005-007 v1.1, fixes 64-bit bug
- Security Update 2005-007 (#2): Proper updating procedure; Problems with startup, reverting; 64-bit apps broken; more
- Apple releases Security Update 2005-007
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menu (right button) abilities. First I thought it was my new Mighty Mouse
settings and then when that didn't fix it; I reverted back to my Logitec M1000
Laser - no good, either. I did all the regular things - OnyX, Permissions
Repair with Disk Utility, downloaded the Update directly from Apple and
reapplied it.
Nothing has worked and I do not want to do an archive and reinstall - I
remember reading about an application that allows me to open up the
contents of the install disk (or updates) and just do a reinstall of Safari - does
anyone remember the name of it? I thnk that might be a way to fix it... but
who knows :(
Thanks
You may be thinking of Pacifist.
Thanks, Mate - that is it -
I also "discovered" that if I turn off "allow contextual menus" in PithHelmet, that
everythign works fine again in Safari - in fact, things are loading better.
Go figure...
sluggish, apps would not install and overall system perfromance went down.
I got hit harder on my G4. LaunchBar would quit all the time, Finder would quit
and relaunch and the system became unusable. After trying to fix it with Disk
Utility and TechTool Pro 4 things became only worse. TT4 reported some 60+
bad blocks. In the end my primary harddrive wouldn't mount anymore. DU
hadn't been able to fix the volume either (it would quit with an error message
after some time). So I used Data Rescue and was able to, at least, rescue some
data. I'm not sure whether my issues were really connected to the Security
Update but they started immediately afterwards. However, I also installed J2 5.0
Release 1. All this happened after a restart... rather without warning.
The problems you saw on your wife's iBook may have been coincidental to the problems you saw on your G4. Some people are having problems caused by the latest Security Update, but as far as your G4 goes, it's very unlikely that bad blocks on your hard drive would be caused by any software installer, though I suppose it's possible, at least in combination with other factors. It's more likely your drive had bad blocks before you installed the Security Update, but no files used in running OS X were occupying those bad blocks at the moment, so you didn't see a problem. When you installed the Security Update, some files needed by OS X were possibly written to where the bad blocks are, and after that, you saw the problem. I would have expected the installer to complain when it tried to write to bad blocks, but maybe sometimes it doesn't. It's also possible that the bad blocks went bad entirely by coincidence, right after you installed the Security Update--I've seen strange coincidences like that. You also say your Mac is a G4, but you don't indicate if you mean a Powerbook G4--if so, did you jostle it or bump it, even slightly, especially while it was running, during or after the update? This might have caused the drive's read/write heads to hit the spinning platters and damage some blocks.
In my experience, a drive that has developed bad blocks, from whatever cause, should be replaced, since more than half the time, bad blocks can't be reliably fixed by any utility, even by erasing the drive, even if you use Disk Utility's or some other formatter's "zero all data" option--the bad blocks may seem fixed for a while, but they tend to go bad again, or other blocks begin to fail, since the drive is simply dying. Sometimes a zero all data operation gives you a good drive again, but it's best not to take chances.
Thank you for your comments. The G4 is a desktop and not a very new one
(Yikes) but the HD isn't quite as old. I re-zeroed the drive and am currently
hoping for the best. However, I got a new 200 GB drive which I put into an
Oxford Semiconductor FW case for backups. I certainly will perform regular
updates. Well, looks like I gotta upgrade soon anyway as my Mac's ROM isn't
even capable of 48bit addressing and thus only 'sees' 128GB of a 200GB HD.
There are a few issues here which are annoying. After salvaging most of the old
drive, I'm trying to copy back some of the preferences etc. to the new
installation. When doing so I get warnings like 'one or more of the items have
special privileges'. Wonderful, is there anyway to know *which ones* ? What to
do about it ?
I'm seeing more and more drives that aren't that old--only two or three
years--developing bad blocks. I hope your drive holds up, but luckily hard
drives are fairly cheap these days.
One way of determining which items have special privileges, is to break down
the copy into smaller pieces--copy just individual folders, files, etc. until the
message appears. As you can see, this can be a pretty time-consuming
process. I don't know of a utility that will search by file permissions settings,
including Spotlight and File Buddy. However, if you decide you don't really
need to narrow down which items these are, you can copy them by booting
into root/System Administrator mode (different from a simple Admin
account). Apple's Knowledgebase document 106290 describes how to
activate the root user account, and then how to log into it. Hope that helps.
Splendid. Yes, starting into 'super user' mode is what I was looking for.
That certainly is helpful. Thanks so much!
- by Fingal August 22, 2005 11:01 AM PDT
- An earlier poster mentioned Pacifist as a way to take care of a problem
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(9 Comments)specifically with Safari. I think Pacifist may be of even more help in the
general situation of problems with system updates.<br>
Open up /Library/Receipts/SecUpd2005-007Pan.pkg with Pacifist. It will tell
you exactly what was installed and where and what the permissions should
be, etc. That could be valuable information to troubleshoot problems with
the update. If nothing else, you could take an educated guess as to exactly
which component of the update is the real problem and replace just that part
of the package.<br>
Package receipts could be the basis for a good uninstaller program and
indeed there has been some work on such a program as open source but the
project seems to have died. I think it would be a good idea to get
something like this going again to troubleshoot just this kind of problem.
See <a href="http://www.osxgnu.org/info/pkgdelete.html">OSXPM</a>.