Updated 2008/6/28. There have been a few incidents where systems have been unusable after performing an upgrade even when using the Restore script properly, and it has been tracked down to kexts which have previously been removed by the user but which the new upgrade or security patch has re-installed. The Restore script now takes this into account and disables those re-installed kexts automatically, so following this procedure should now result in a working upgrade in every situation.

There are lots of threads asking about how to safely upgrade, and there are lots of posts giving instructions that work for some people but not others. This is intended to be a "once and for all" solution, both for major upgrades and for security patches. Several posts describe security patches as safe to apply, but many people still report problems. The procedure described below will make sure your system still works. It's not necessary when installing regular program updates, like Safari 3.1.1, only system updates and security patches. I have successfully installed the 10.4.11 update from a 10.4.8 system, and security patches 2008-02 and 2008-03, using this procedure. And I now have a 100% working up-to-date system.

There are two shell scripts that need to be created, "backup.sh" and "restore.sh" which, as the names imply, backup critical system components on your current installation and then restore those components after an upgrade.

ONE-TIME SETUP
First, you need to create a backup directory and put the backup and restore scripts in that directory. This only needs to be done once. Thereafter, installing an update is as simple as running two scripts. A good place for the backup directory is in your home directory, so open a terminal and do the following:


You can, of course, use a different directory name and location (the scripts only operate within the directory in which they are executed). Still in the terminal window, type:


Now, copy the following code and paste it into the nano editor (to paste within nano, right-click and select Paste):
backup.sh:


CTRL+O will save the file and CTRL+X will exit nano. To make sure the script is executable (or else you won't be able to run it) type this command:


Now we need the restore script.
UPDATED 2008/6/28. Now disables kexts that may have previously been removed by the user, but have been re-installed by the upgrade/patch.



Copy the following code and paste it into the nano editor:
restore.sh:


CTRL+O to save, CTRL+X to exit. Again make sure the script is executable:


You now have everything in place to perform all updates in the future.

BACKING UP YOUR SYSTEM
Before you upgrade or apply a security patch, run the backup script. NOTE: You must "sudo -s" before running the scripts since the files involved are owned by root:wheel. I was tempted to put the sudo command in the script itself, but I decided it was better to sudo manually so that you know you're about to change system files. Open a terminal, sudo, cd to your sys_backup directory, and run backup.sh:


The script will display the steps it is performing while backing up the critical components. IF YOU SEE AN ERROR MESSAGE, DO NOT CONTINUE UNTIL YOU'VE RESOLVED THE PROBLEM. Most likely you didn't copy/paste the scripts properly, or if you input them by hand there's a typo. If you've followed the one-time setup procedure exactly, you should not get any errors, so double-check that you've done everything right before you post problems in this thread.

When the script completes, you now have all your system critical components backed up and are ready to upgrade. You may want to copy your sys_backup folder to a memory stick or external drive, just to be on the safe side. It's called a Hackintosh for a reason.

UPDATE PROCEDURE
Leave the Terminal window open, start the Software Update tool and click "Check Now". At this point, you want to update the system, not individual programs, so uncheck everything except the update you're installing. Let the system perform the upgrade, but DO NOT CLICK THE RESTART BUTTON. This is very important (which is why it's bold, CAPITALIZED, and red). You do not want the system to reboot into an upgraded kernel, because that will mean certain death 99% of the time. Leave that window as it is, waiting for you to click Restart, and go back to the terminal to run the restore script:


This script restores your critical components, clears the kext cache, and repairs disk permissions. It will display the steps as it goes, and when disk permissions are being repaired you may get a whole slew of output. This is normal and means that some permissions were repaired. When the script is done, go back to the Software Update window and click Restart.

This backup/update/restore procedure can be followed for the security patches as well. As I said, some people have reported no problems installing a security patch without doing anything fancy, but I got a Gray Screen Of Death several times trying to install the 2008-02 security update before I settled on this procedure.

CONCLUSION
Once you have done your one-time setup, upgrading (or installing a security patch) is as simple as:
1) sudo -s, then run backup.sh
2) Install the upgrade/patch but DO NOT RESTART yet
3) run restore.sh, then Restart

Technically, you should only have to run the backup script once, so the process boils down to just the last two steps. However, I recommend running the backup script every time, since it is possible that your backup files may have accidentally been deleted or altered in some way during your day-to-day work (though not likely).

Some people may note that the backup script backs up more files than are really necessary; however, I found out the hard way that it is difficult to determine in advance which files you really need to back up for a particular update. Better safe than sorry, as they say.

I did it the hard way a month ago, updating XxX 10.4.10 to 10.4.11 on a (crappy) Gericom Laptop with 256mb of ram.
I backed up some kexts (I don't remember which ones) and mach_kernel (SSE2) that I knew had to be copied by looking on the net, fired up Software Update and I let it do its work. When it asked me to reboot, I didn't click anything (so it didn't reboot), I opened up a terminal and restored all of the files I backed up, then I fixed the permissions with Disk Utility.
It then rebooted fine (except waiting almost a quarter of hour for diskarb, but that only happens on the first reboot after the update), and installed back the Loginwindow and System Profiler patches from the XxX DVD.
Everything was fine after that.
I tried and succedeed by using pretty much the same procedure on a Dell Optiplex with a Socket 423 Pentium 4.
I wrote a guide about installing Tiger on that laptop, and I still have it on the laptop itself, I should polish it and put it (or a link to it) on the wiki sometime.

Anyway, why are you copying all of the extensions from 10.4.10 on a 10.4.11? Most other kexts except for six or seven work perfectly fine, so you don't need that as you lose some updated drivers.
If you wanted to copy extensions just to be sure, you'd at most require a dozen IMHO.

I wrote these scripts exactly so people wouldn't have to do it "the hard way". It's kind of hit-and-miss -- if you forget one file you can leave your system hosed.



Ok, which dozen? Are you sure those dozen would include the kexts used by my hardware? And the updated drivers are from Apple, updated for the Apple hardware. Most of us have to use special hacked kexts for at least some of our hardware, so the Apple updates kill the system. What if Apple updates the AC97 audio driver and I didn't include that one? Will my audio still work? (BTW, the answer for me is no, which I found out the hard way.) On any given computer, most of the kexts aren't even used because that computer doesn't include the hardware the kext supports. You can look in the System Profiler and see which kexts are currently being used by your system, but it only lists top-level kexts and not support kexts used by the top-level ones. The point is that by backing up all the kexts on your working system, you know it will work when you've done the update and restore your working kexts.

I tried figuring out which kexts I really needed using the System Profiler, and I thought I had figured it all out. There were about 20 total. I even wrote a script to backup and restore just those. Well, I evidently forgot an important one (possibly one of those support kexts used by one I included) because after that update attempt I got stuck in an endless reboot cycle.

All in all, I reinstalled 10.4.8 and tried to upgrade to 10.4.11 about 15 times before realizing that the simplest solution was probably the best solution. Anyway, as I said at the beginning of the first post, I went straight from 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 and the 2008-02 and 2008-03 security patches using these two scripts.

I just wanted to provide a working guide that used a simple method, so people wouldn't have to search all over trying to figure out which files they needed to back up and then forgetting one (or more).

Trying this with uphuck 10.4.9 1.4a on AMD Athlon x64 3500+ (SSE2, Socket 939), ASUS A8V Deluxe, ATI Radeon 1950 XT (AGP, 512mb, VID=7280), 2 Gigs of Ram.

I'll keep my reply up2date.

Thanks in advice, Gruni.

Ok, then. It's just that I haven't seen any issues on the machines I tried the hard procedure on, I guess that on other machines it may be different.

I'm downloading and installing the 10.4.11 update as we speak. I'll post back when I get done.

Thanks very much for the guide. Worked perfectly for a 10.4.9 to 10.4.11 update.

Will this method also work for future Leopard updates?

Works just fine with me, 10.4.8 => 10.4.11

Tks

Thanks for the success report. I'm not sure about Leopard, my laptop video card is currently unsupported in Leopard which makes using Leopard completely impractical for me (until I get a new laptop ). However, as we all have found, installing a system upgrade might mean having to re-install OS X when it borks your system, so it's always a crossing-your-fingers moment. Given that, it sure wouldn't hurt to try it. If you do, be sure to report in this thread. And if anyone does use these scripts to successfully upgrade Leopard, please let me know so I can update the instructions to reflect that it does work in leopard.

hmmm

i did exactly as ur guide said i get a kernel crash on bootup =S
i made a sys_backup folder then backup.sh with what u made, copied and pasted then i made the restore.sh and did the same thing. i then launched software update and installed the 10.4.11 update, when it asked to restart i opened the terminal from before and ran restore.sh then rebooted. Upon reboot i get a kernel crash.

any ideas?

(the machine was running 10.4.9 on a sse3 intel core duo 3.2ghz)

Sorry you're having a problem, I suspect you didn't follow some of the execution steps properly. In other words, you need to make the sys_backup folder, then in Terminal "cd" to that folder and create the two scripts inside that folder. Also, you MUST run backup.sh as root (by doing a "sudo -s" first) from Terminal within the sys_backup folder, and you MUST do so before you install the upgrade. Then, before rebooting, you MUST run restore.sh as root from Terminal also within the sys_backup folder. If you don't run the scripts within Terminal as root and in the sys_backup folder, it is unlikely that restore.sh will have any files to restore. I should really add some kind of checking in restore.sh to make sure it has found the backup files and warn if it doesn't, and to check for root as well. I'm kind of swamped at work right now, but I should be able to upload a new restore.sh script with that checking some time today.

If you didn't "sudo -s" before running the scripts, the backup script will still work, but it won't preserve the proper permission; however, restore.sh won't copy the files at all, since you have to be root to write where it's trying to write. I suggest you boot from your install DVD (actually hit ENTER when to boot timeout shows up, so that the installation will start -- don't worry, you won't overwrite anything). When you get past the Language selection and see the installation program, click on Utilities in the Menu Bar, then select Terminal. In Terminal "cd" to "/Volumes/<your disk>" where "<your disk>" is the name of the disk or partition where you've installed OS X. If you can't remember the name, just do an "ls /Volumes" to see the disks that are mounted, and you should see yours listed there. If it's not, close Terminal and open Utilities->Disk Utility. You can select your OS X disk and mount it with the Mount button, then exit Disk Utility and restart Terminal and "cd" to "/Volumes/<your disk>". Now you need to do some searching to find where the backup was made. First look in your home folder (/Volumes/<your disk>/Users/<your username>). If you double-clicked on backup.sh instead of running it from Terminal, it may have created the backup in the top of your home directory instead of within sys_backup. Look for a folder named "system.library.extensions" (note the dots instead of slashes). There should be a couple of other similarly named folders, and the backup and restore scripts should be there along side them. If not, find them and copy them there. Since this Terminal session has your logged in as root, running restore.sh should now work, and when it repairs permissions it will fix any that the non-root run of backup changed. Reboot and you should be fine.

Have now tried the script for a Leopard 10.5.2 to 10.5.3 update!

Unfortunately it does not work!

The main reason for not working is that the update installation only starts AFTER you restart, so the restore before pressing restart becomes totally irrelevant!

Luckily I had used NortonGhost/DOS to make a backup so I was back with my original install in no time.

obijohn,

i did as u said and booted in the install dvd, pressed enter at the darwin boot loader, when Utilities>Terminal. Then i cd'd to my user directory and into the sys_backup folder where all the folders were. Ran the restore script and watched it error.. as well the script tries to copy from the hdd to the dvd as thats how its programmed; so i manually typed out the commands, eg cp -Rp system.library.extensions/* /Volumes/Hackintosh/System/Library/Extensions/ for all of the commands in the restore script, including the kernel, then once that had finished i ran diskutil and repaired the permissions and rebooted to a kernel crash again. all of the files were indeed in the backup folders, atleast all of the folders mentioned in ur script were found with files in them.

so i pretty much manually tried to restore but to no avail. When i have the chance ill try install leopard, unless u know of another way which doesnt involve me formatting.

Thanks for the help =]

If the update installation only starts AFTER you restart, then you should be able to run the restore script after the update has finished installing, and then reboot. As I said, I don't have Leopard to test with, so thanks for trying! If you can, try it one more time, by still running the restore script before pressing restart (so you get your safe kernel back for the reboot), and then restore again after the update installation (after the reboot), and then manually reboot again after that. I'm fairly confident this procedure will work, but I won't know until someone tries.

Yes, I forgot that the script uses absolute paths instead of relative paths, which makes running it from Terminal as booted from the install disc not work. But manually doing the commands as you did will do the trick, assuming your files were backed up properly to begin with. With the files properly backed up and restored, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to boot. Really, none.

So, you're going to need to be a little more specific about the crash you're getting. When do you get the kernel crash? If it's before any kexts are loaded, you didn't backup your working kernel properly before running the system upgrade. Also, double-check the permissions of the kernel backup, and if necessary "sudo chmod 644" the backup kernel (if you didn't "sudo -s" before running the backup, the backup kernel won't have the right permissions). If it's crashing after trying to load some kexts (say, spewing something about ACPI for example), then you didn't backup your kexts properly before the update was installed. There's nothing magic about it -- if you've restored your old kernel and the old kexts, there's no reason it shouldn't boot.

Basically it boils down to something not getting backed up before the system upgrade ran (and now, if you have run the backup script after the system upgrade, it will just back up the new incompatible files, and not the old restored ones). Attach your backup.sh and restore.sh to this thread so I can see if there was problem when you created them.

Another possibility is if you ran backup.sh AFTER the upgrade installed, right before running restore.sh, you backed up the new incompatible files, not your old good ones. It's gotta be 0) sudo -s; 1) backup.sh; 2) system upgrade but don't restart; 3) restore.sh; 4) now reboot -- in exactly that order.

I did a restore before restart but after a minute or so during the update install, the system freeze and will not reboot (gray screen)

Works magic on system updates. But, do I have to do restore after everything I update or just system updates ?

hmm i suspected the kernel aswell, so i ran the installer dvd and reinstalled the kernel of the dvd *original kernel* after checking the permissions of the backuped ones.. after i rebooted it still kernel errored and yeah i know thereotically speaking it should boot but i dont know why it isnt..

in the verbose print out it just says panic at cpu 0 caller 0x001A496B, i mean i dont make much of this stuff so yeah.. other then that there is no reference of a kext error or anything besides somethign saying " kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependicies): com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement(1.6.7)@0x24a96000"

thats all it mentions before stating the kernel version and the creator ( 8.9.1 by ToH ) other then that i cant see anything else. Is there anything else you'd be looking for? oh, and i cant copy the script here as the computer is on doesnt boot.. but it is a replica of what u posted above (triple checked both), and yes i did run it before i applied the update, im 100% sure of this. I might try and just install leopard, although im not sure if it works on Intel Core Duo's (not core 2 duo) so yeah.

Just System Updates and Security Patches. Regular software updates don't need anything restored. The only software update that I'm aware of which installs a new kernel is Time Machine, but us Tigers don't have to worry about that one.Get back into a Terminal from the install DVD and delete the AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext, in the /Volumes/<your_disk>/System/Library/Extensions/ folder. Delete the /Volumes/<your_disk>/System/Library/Extensions.mkext and /Volumes/<your_disk>/System/Library/Extensions.kextcache files and reboot. However, before it gets a chance to start the Darwin boot hit F8 a couple of times until you get the "boot:" prompt and add the cpus=1 boot flag. Your original distro may have removed the AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement kext automatically, since it causes crashes like you describe in certain configurations. It's possible that the 10.4.11 upgrade you applied re-installed that kext. That's a very common kext to have to remove, so I may need to add some checking in the scripts; for example creating a tiny log file that notes whether it exists during the backup stage, and then during the restore state checking the log file to see whether it should be removed after the upgrade has run.Right now this is my best guess as to what your problem might be.I've done this upgrade procedure on 3 different machines, upgrading from 10.4.9 to 10.4.11 on one, and 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 on the other two. I also installed both security updates on all 3 machines using the scripts, and didn't have a single problem with any one of them during the whole process. So I'm absolutely convinced that something went out of the ordinary during your upgrade, such as re-installing that IntelCPU kext I mentioned above. Before you install Leopard, try what I suggested above. Even if you end up wanting to install Leopard anyway, I'd like to know if this was indeed your problem so I can address it in the scripts.

This worked great for me. I used the JaS 10.4.8 image on a Dell GX270.

However, I can't seem to "connect to server" anymore. Any ideas on what I can do to regain this function? I'm trying to connect to an SMB share on a Windows box on the network.

When I try to connect it prompts for the password, but after entering the password I get an error: "Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred (Error code -50)." It used to work before I updated to 10.4.11.

The other minor thing I noticed is that the finder crashes when I go to "About This Mac"... but, that's not a big deal if I can't get that working.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
-Morgan

Thanks for the success report. The two machines I upgraded from 10.4.8 were also JaS.



Take a look at System Preferences->Sharing. Most likely it's a network settings issue. I'm able to connect to my Windows shares, so it's hard to guess what your problem might be. One thing to check is on your Windows machine, do you run McAfee? If so, open the Security Center, click on Advanced, and make sure you've got the Windows File Sharing button checked. This bugger caused problems for a lot of people before someone thought to check McAfee settings for file sharing permission. If none of that works, take a look at this thread. It has a smbfs.kext file which fixes this issue for some people.


Hmm, this shouldn't happen since all the profile reporters are backed up and restored. If it was working before, it should be working now. One thing to try is to boot from the Jas DVD, open a Terminal and copy all the files in /System/Library/SystemProfiler/ to /Volumes/<your_disk>/System/Library/SytemProfiler/. If there are only a couple of files in /System/Library/SystemProfiler/ then the DVD startup system isn't loading them all (I can't remember off the top of my head if they're going to be there or not), so you may need to copy them from the DVD using Pacifist. You will probably have to browse around a bit to find them, I can't remember which package they're in (try looking in Essentials first). Oh wait, I think there's a package which says something like "About This Mac Fix" or something like that. If you find it, just install that one first and see if it fixes your problem. Also do a forum search for "about this mac crash". It was a common problem for a while, and there are fixes on the board somewhere. And you might want to double-check your sys_backup folder and make sure that the system.library.systemprofiler folder has a bunch of files in it (which would indicate they were backed up). Maybe something interfered with your backup and they didn't get copied in the first place.

Anyway, you should be able to get this part working again, one way or another.

Thanks ObiJohn for your suggestions... but I found the answer last night. Apparently searching the forum for "error code -50" doesn't work so well...

In case others who upgrade to 10.4.11 using this method have the same problem, I had to install something called: SambaFix_for_10.4.6.pkg.dmg - available at this forum page:
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...mp;#entry173191

It worked great.

The few people who've had problems after upgrading seem to have situations where the upgrade or security patch re-installs a kext that had previously been removed (for example, AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext, which is removed automatically by several distros in certain cases). In the first version of the Restore script, it simply copied over the backed-up kexts, therefore any new kexts installed in the upgrade would still be present. I've updated the Restore script to take this into account, and it now automatically disables any kext that is re-installed by the upgrade or security patch, but which had been previously removed by a distro install or by the user.

The updated script is in the first post.

hi all,
is this thread still active? I mean, will I ever get an answer if I post?
Thanks in advance, and...Glad to be among you!

After initially thinking my upgrade from 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 was OK I now see I have the same problem with accessing my Windows XP via Samba as many others have reported. Error 50

Tried using "SambaFix_for_10.4.6.pkg.dmg" but "Open failed"

Could the "SambaFix_for_10.4.6.pkg.dmg" be corrupt? The file is available as a .zip but apparently not, only incorrect name.

I can see this worked for a few people including sleeper42! How did you get it to work?

Thanks a lot for the guide! just updated 10.4.10 and sec. updates flawlesly!
Thanks a lot!!!
Malligno

great tutorial thanx.

Works Great! Really deserves a sticky!

Backup went ok without any problems. Updated to 10.4.11, ran the restore script BEFORE restarting the system, now the video display to totally corrupted. Have to work out how to get it back before can report if there is any other problems with the update

UPDATE!! Reinstalled ATI video drivers in single mode. Managed to get OSX booted back up but lost QE & CI functions. Also machine reboots when i click 'About This Mac'. Ran the restore script again, this time no reboots when clicking on 'About this Mac'.

Had to go back to 10.4.8 because I messed around with my machine too much trying to get ATI video drivers to work properly.

Edit.....UPDATE!!!
Had another go at trying to update to 10.4.11 over the weekend and it worked after some gentle persuasion by me lol
Firstly i downloaded 10.4.11 (Intel) from the mac site and it would not allow me to install onto my hard drive so i downloaded 10.4.11 combo (Intel) and this one worked. I had carried out the instructions as set out by the OP only this time when i ran the restore script it said it could not find SC directory in the folder Shared. I ignored this and rebooted the system. Firstly while the waiting icon was rotating the machine automatically rebooted so i waited again for the machine to boot properly and low and behold the graphics was corrupted again. So I manually powered down the machine and rebooted into single user mode and reinstalled my ATI video drivers. This time the graphics display was working fine. I clicked on 'About This Mac' because i had read from other forum posts that the machine can appear to reboot the graphics display and guess what, it did just that, clicked it and the screen appeared to refresh itself. So i went into Terminal to run the restore script again and then rebooted the machine. This time clicking on 'About This Mac' works fine.

Had a few teething problems but many thanks to the OP

Hi gyus, if anybody cares, 006-2008 security update works without any backups. hcks or other issues, after install You just need to restore old LoginWindow.app and ENJOY :-)

Thanks for the the info, worked almost perfectly on my Pentium M 1,7 Ghz (SSE2).
it even backed up my ATI 9600 drivers, which worked again after replacing the OpenGL.framework :-)
I directly updated from JaS 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 using the combo update from Apple, and then applied the SecurityPatch 2008-006 with your method, worked
Now I'm updating iTunes, Quicktime, Safari and so on

Thanks again!!!

Updated to 10.4.11 and everything else successfully
Had to use the SMB patch. Everything else worked just like it has before.

Tried using this with the SambaFix_for_10.4.6.pkg.dmg and it did not work. Did not get any error messages when making the back up nor restoring.

I'm on JAs 10.4.6 trying to update to 10.4.11 using the software update. The update did install, but when booting up the system, I get stuck on the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning circle.

Yatta! I was in the exact same situation but OP + post #30 have been lifesavers.

After update (10.4.8 - 10.4.11) I reinstalled video drivers, rebooted with -F, re-run the restore script, rebooted with -F once more and all was fine again. Didn't try the Samba thing, but I really don't need it anyway.

Hardware:
- PB Easynote R8719
- Celeron M 1.3 Ghz / 1.25 GB DDR333
- Ati Mobility Radeon 9700 64 MB
- Belkin F5D7050 USB WiFi with RT73 chipset

So far, so good.

i am having a problem upgrading.

I did all the steps exactly I ran the backup script perfectly ran the system update but when I run the restore script it runs a couple processes and freezes on restoring permissions.

I left it the whole night to see if it was just taking long but it did not budge. as soon as i quit the terminalapp the whole computer just bugs out and i get the nonstop beach ball I cant do anything.

since I did the back up is it possible to run the restore script from terminal on the cd? or maybe remotely?

please help.


EDIT: I tried removing the repair permissions section of the script it allowed it to finish but the computer would freeze if I tried to open disc utillity I was able to repair permissions through the disk utilliy on the install disc but it would not boot..

any help will be greatly appreciated

okay I have kinda a weird problem....everything goes fine til right near the end of the update, at this point I don't get a reboot option everything on the screen just disappears except the top bar and none of the menu's are clickable in that, is it possible that this is because I'm running an AMD?

Yes, it kills your OSX, you need to backup /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework from working System and put it back with all Updates installed.

Your solution works elegantly on a virtual machine!

10.4.10 VMWare Appliance updated to 10.4.11:

Made backup and restore scripts -> Ran backup -> Ran 10.4.11 update (after the update it said it didn't update properly/completely; asked me to redo update: I didn't) -> Ran restore -> Restarted!

Thanks!