[Simon]

I used to be able to use ASR to clone a Mac boot partition to an external FW drive and then boot that Mac from the clone on the FW drive. Worked just fine.

Ever since 10.4.6 I can't do it anymore. ASR creates the clone and it seems to be totally complete, nevertheless I can't boot from the clone. The Mac's stuck at the gray Apple screen and doesn't boot.

I've been able to reproduce this behavior with different FW disks (and yes, in both cases the drive firmware was up to date), with 10.4.6-10.4.8 and on PPC and Intel Macs (for the Intel Macs I used a GPT partitioned FW disk which otherwise boots the Intel Mac fine).

Does anybody have an idea what's going on here? Can anybody create bootable clones on a FW disk with ASR on a 10.4.8 system? Or is it 'officially' broken?

I'd really prefer to just boot from the clone and use ASR to copy it all back, than to reinstall 10.4 from scratch and then use Migration Assistant to copy back everything from the clone. ASR is so much faster than a reinstall.

[Art Vandelay]

No problems with ASR that I've found. I use NetRestore and Disk Utility's Restore all the time. It sounds like you're using ASR through Terminal. Perhaps you're forgetting one of the necessary steps. When I want to clone a disk, I just simply use Restore in Disk Utility. It handles ASR automatically for you.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

No problems with ASR that I've found. I use NetRestore and Disk Utility's Restore all the time. It sounds like you're using ASR through Terminal. Perhaps you're forgetting one of the necessary steps. When I want to clone a disk, I just simply use Restore in Disk Utility. It handles ASR automatically for you.

Actually, recently I've only been using it through DU. I dragged the boot partition to 'Source' and an external FW partition to 'Destination'. I select 'Erase destination' and let it do the clone. The clone seems to be complete, and I can select it as a boot partition from the Startup Disk sys pref but after it reboots, it just gets stuck at the gray Apple logo screen.

It used to work like a charm. I use it on about five Macs once per week. I used to also be able to boot from these clones, but since 10.4.6 and the Intel Macs it seems broken.

[Big Mac]

You aren't trying to boot from a Mac drive on Mactels, are you?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

You aren't trying to boot from a Mac drive on Mactels, are you?

The PPC Macs are being booted from a PPC formatted drive while the Intel Macs are being booted from a GPT partitioned drive.

So the partition table shouldn't be the reason why this isn't working.

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by Simon

Actually, recently I've only been using it through DU. I dragged the boot partition to 'Source' and an external FW partition to 'Destination'. I select 'Erase destination' and let it do the clone. The clone seems to be complete, and I can select it as a boot partition from the Startup Disk sys pref but after it reboots, it just gets stuck at the gray Apple logo screen.

It used to work like a charm. I use it on about five Macs once per week. I used to also be able to boot from these clones, but since 10.4.6 and the Intel Macs it seems broken.

Hmm, don't know what to tell you then. I've had no problems with 10.4.7 or 10.4.8. Try booting in verbose mode to see if you see anything relevant.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

Hmm, don't know what to tell you then. I've had no problems with 10.4.7 or 10.4.8. Try booting in verbose mode to see if you see anything relevant.

I did that some time ago to confirm that it was indeed hanging.

It said something about mDNSresponder and that it would retry 10 times. And then it would just hand there. I'd have to do it again and write it down to give you the exact message.

[Simon]

OK, I tried a verbose boot to get all the information. Here it is. It boots normally up to

Code:
kextd: 366 cached, no personalities to catalog
kextd: couldn't set up diskarb sessions
kextd: diskarb isn't ready; we'll be trying again soon
mDNSResponder - 108.2 starting
com.apple.nibindd: exited abnormally: Bad system call
com.apple.nibindd: respawning too quickly! throttling
com.apple.nibindd: 10 more failures without living at least 60 seconds will cause job removal 
com.apple.nibindd: will restart in 10 seconds
com.apple.nibindd: too many failures in succession

and then it starts again at

Code:
com.apple.nibindd: exited abnormally: Bad system call

and repeats the loop ten times. After the last time it just hangs, the fans on full blast and nothing else happens.

[Simon]

I also tried booting in safe mode. No change.

[Art Vandelay]

I'm pretty sure that is for NetInfo. Are you using NetInfo?

[Art Vandelay]

Looks like DiskArbitration isn't starting up normally either. That could be the real source of the problem. If your disk isn't getting mounted properly, then everything else is going to fail.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

I'm pretty sure that is for NetInfo. Are you using NetInfo?

Nope.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Art Vandelay

Looks like DiskArbitration isn't starting up normally either. That could be the real source of the problem. If your disk isn't getting mounted properly, then everything else is going to fail.

But how could the disk not mount properly? It's a FW disk with the most recent firmware, it's GUID partitioned, it carries 'blessable' OS X installs (even the boot loader [the one you get by holding option during startup] shows the OS X installs on the disk, so obviously it mounts) and it used to work just fine with <10.4.5 and my Al PowerBook G4.

[ldambergs]

Simon - I am having the same problem booting from a SATA backup drive over FireWire on my MacBook Pro running OS 10.5. Did you ever find a solution?

Thanks!

[Simon]

Unfortunately I didn't.