[parkds]

I went to install the new official update last night which went fine until the optimization part. After 12 hours and the progress bar not moving anymore I finally hit the restart button on my G4. The hard drive was only spinning for about a second every 2 minutes by this AM (kept going slower and slower since starting the optimization). So I am not running the update but not with the optimization being done. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is or how to fix this? I installed OSX over 9.1 on the same partition. I have a very full 27gb hard drive, 516MB RAM, 450 G4....thanks for any help!

[bleen]

Yeah, I had the similar problem. Before running the update I couldn't do the prebinding thing in the terminal either. I'm have in iBook Special Edition 366, 128MB RAM & 6GB HD.

[ctt1wbw]

Same problem here on my G3 Powerbook. I eventually had to force the computer to power down after 45 minutes of disk access sounds. This screwed up the Startup Disk control panel under OS 9.1. I have sent in a comment to Apple about this. I think everyone that has had this problem should send it in to Apple.

[billj]

Yep, same here. Every time an installer optimizes or I try update_prebinding the gui gets unresponsive while the discs chatter away requiring a three finger salute. The exception was the 10.0.1 update which logged me out a third of the way through the optimizing, I believe it never finished optimizing.
All is well just un-optimized.

[parkds]

I called apple today and the guy I poke to said it was the first he had heard of it (he didn't even know the update had come out though...sigh). Everyone wo has this problem please call Apple so they know. It only takes a few minutes and is a 800 number. Unfort the "help" they provided was useless..they told me to try to reinstall. And then that they wouldn't help me until I tried installing the update again but having downloaded it from the apple site instead of via software update. They said that it will be posted mid-week..but I know it will make no difference..they just had no clue....hopefully the "A" team on Monday can help more.

[krove]

I had the same problem with an iMac DV 400 MHz. 10.0.1 update sat all night and I had to force it to restart. After downloading the XOptimize app from VersionTracker.com, the same thing occurred. I even attempted to do it from the terminal, but with out luck. All three times my hard drive churned as described above. I doubt the pre-binding actually finished, so I wanted to try again to take advantage of the minor speed increase. Anyone with knowledge as to what it going on would be great!

krove

------------------
*The next sentence is entirely true...
*The previous sentence is most decidedly false...

I was having the same problem on my pismo 500/512MB. After the update failed I started having terrible performance problems. Running norton didn't fix the optimization problem. I wiped the drive and did a clean install of everything and the update worked fine. Not that that's a viable solution for everyone. And I think I lost a recent draft of a term paper. ARGH!

I was having the same problem on my pismo 500/512MB. After the update failed I started having terrible performance problems. Running norton didn't fix the optimization problem. I wiped the drive and did a clean install of everything and the update worked fine. Not that that's a viable solution for everyone. And I think I lost a recent draft of a term paper. ARGH!

[tietokonetonttu]

Have you used Disk Utility.app? It's on /Applications/Utilities and can tell you if there is something wrong with your file system. It isn't the ultimate disk management application, but at least it is available on every system.
I found out some file system errors and got them repaired (lost my uptime). Althought I didn't have any fs related problems.

--TKT

[Rando]

Yep, had the same type of problem on my iMac DVSE. I ran Software Update and the progress bar stopped just shy of completing. I let it sit there for about 30 minutes, then did a manual reboot. I then ran the "optimization" myself after verifying that everything installed correctly (to the best of my knowledge, which ain't much in X).

Doesn't Apple have a QA department? I work in Software QA, and I can't believe some of the installation issues I'm reading about this update, let alone what I've experienced personally ...

[Rando]

Yep, had the same type of problem on my iMac DVSE. I ran Software Update and the progress bar stopped just shy of completing. I let it sit there for about 30 minutes, then did a manual reboot. I then ran the "optimization" myself after verifying that everything installed correctly (to the best of my knowledge, which ain't much in X).

Doesn't Apple have a QA department? I work in Software QA, and I can't believe some of the installation issues I'm reading about this update, let alone what I've experienced personally ...

[Rando]

Damn, first double post.

Throw me a party.

I experienced this same problem. Both the optimizing step of the 10.0.1 install and the command-line prebind command cause my rev. A iMac to grind to a halt. I really don't want to clean install! I called Apple, and the rep I spoke with had no idea there was even a 10.0.1 update...

[nobody]

I can believe they do know nothing about this. This also happend when I install the developer-CD.

If your system becomes unresponsive while running the updater and you have to make a cold restart:
This works for me, so maybe you could try this out:
Before running the update:
open a terminal window, type "sudo top", authenticate
open a second terminal, type "sudo sh", authenticate
run the update, as soon as the "optimizing process" starts, look in the "top" window. note, there is a process called "update_prebinding .......". look a the "VSIZE" column. the size of the "VSIZE" grows about the double or triple of you real ram, your system will become unresponsive to inputs.
then switch to the second terminal, type "ps x | grep update_prebinding"
note the PID of the first process on the most left.
type "kill -KILL xyz", where "xyz" is the PID of the process.
the update will finish, but without optimization.

I only got the update_prebinding run successfull by temorarily removing my OS9.1 System folder, then run update_prebinding, and then restoring the folder.

philipp

[The MaN]

Does everyone with this problem have OS 9.1 on the same partition as OS X? Please give us all more to work with

------------------
Visit
http://www.TrickX.com

[krove]

Originally posted by The MaN:
Does everyone with this problem have OS 9.1 on the same partition as OS X? Please give us all more to work with

I do.

Ok, here's a solution that might work. I believe the problem is related to files with bad names (special characters) from 9.1 causing your system to "choke" when optimizing.

Specifically, the "update_prebinding" program is chewing on the same filename over and over until you run out of memory and freeze (or restart your computer, whichever comes first).

On my system, the culprit was an invisible file in my 9.1 System Folder called "??Aladdin Transaction??Info??". Here's how to find out if you have that file:

1. launch the Terminal.
2. type (quotes are important):
cd "/System Folder"
3. Then type:
ls -la
4. If you see a file that looks like this:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 50428 Dec 25 1999 ??Aladdin Transaction??Info??

then BINGO you found the problem.

The file isn't easily removed from the terminal, or at least I couldn't figure out how to identify it. So, here's how I did it. This should be old hat to anyone who's deleted an invisible file in OS 9.

1. Boot off the OS 9 CD-ROM
2. Use a utility like Resourcerer (maybe Resedit would work. There are probably other tools on versiontracker.com for deleting invisible files) to check for any hidden, invisible files in the System Folder.
3. Find that darned file. You might not see the ?? question marks in the file name but you will see "Aladdin Transaction Info"
4. Un-invisibilize it. In Resourcerer you do this by Getting Info for the open file and then turning off the bit that makes the file invisible. Sorry i don't have it in front of me.
5. Quit Resourcer or whatever utility you're using.
6. In the finder, grab the file, throw it in the trash.
7. Empty the trash.

Now start OS X up and try doing the prebinding, whether manually from root as--

update_prebinding -verbose -root /

or using Xoptimize or try doing a Software Update. (if you're going to do a Software Update again you may first want to first Trash the /Library/Receipts/10.0.1Update.pkg file.) In my case it didn't hang during the "Optimizing 10.0.01" phase anymore.

If you do *NOT* find the weird ??Aladdin?? file above, there's a way to figure out which file is tripping you up. But this is for more advanced users--

(I'm going to quote FBO who posted this on a macfixit forum)

---
fbo:

Hi all,

I just found a solution to the 'out of memory' problem when using update_prebinding.

I used the command 'fs_usage' to monitor the disk activity of update_prebinding.
It turned out that there was a file with rather exotic characters in it's filename in my OS 9 Systemfolder. When update_prebinding visited that folder it reread it's contents again and again... until it ran out of memory. I deleted that file, reran update_prebinding and it worked just fine :-)

So here is what I did:
1. open two Terminal Windows
2. become root in both windows using 'su'
3. run 'update_prebinding -verbose -root /' in one window
4. run 'ps aux | grep update_prebinding' in the other
5. look at the line that does _not_ have the word 'grep' in it; note the number in the second column. This is update_prebinding's process ID. Lets assume it's 208.
6. run 'fs_usage -w 208' where 208 is of course the process ID you found in step 5.
7. wait until the point you remember update_prebinding stopped to make any progress.
8. Watch the output of fs_usage closely. When it starts to show only blanks where previously filename fragments where shown it's time to...
9. press ctrl-c in both the update_prebinding and the fs_usage window
10. scroll up in the fs_usage window until you see the last file or folder name in the middle column (it may be only a fragment, as fs_usage only displays the last 28 characters)
11. Go to that folder and examine it closely. The file that I had problems with didn't show up in the Finder but in the Terminal using 'ls -la'. Except for some questionmarks in the filename it also contained the String 'Aladdin'....
12. Now comes the tricky part: get rid of the file. I managed to remove it by using a visual ftp client, logging in on my own machine and hitting delete. I guess there are better ways - but I couldn't explain to Terminal (or 'tcsh' to be precise) what file I wanted to delete. Be careful: the file might be vital to your system. So you might just want to rename it instead. Or not even touch it at all. But this is for you to decide. Don't blame me!
13. run 'update_prebinding -verbose -root /' again.

I hope this might help some of you. Good Luck!
---

finally, I found a post from a French user who had this to say:


---
S�bastien:

I am french. Have a french Mac OS. The system folder is called "Dossier Syst�me", and there are many files which contain '�', '�' or '�' in this Folder. These chars are seen as '??' by Mac OS X.

I deleted Mac OS 9 System Folder and any file containing non English characters (I made backup copies on a removable media before). After that, for the first time, I had not to hardware reboot (with the reboot button) my iMac (350MHz, Oct 1999) afteroptimizing the system.

Mac OS X is now incredibly fast !
---

Good luck and I hope this helps.
W

Great fix! I found the Aladdin file and deleted it using Fetch from another machine. No problems with the optimization this time. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks a million -
Great, great fix - first serious annoyance with X, and this has sorted it out.
All I can add is that the simplest way to get rid of that file is from the terminal - get into the system folder (i.e. cd /System\ Folder) then just:
rm *Aladdin*
And the pesky little gremlin should vanish. Might be a problem if you've got another file with the word 'Aladdin' in it there that you must preserve. But that's unlikely.
Thanks again,
Sean

nice,
worked for me...

[parkds]

WOW!!!! thank you so much..you got the problem and the fix dead on write..even the file name! Amazing how people solve things on the boards faster than Apple can! Thank you so much!
doug

[krove]

Well, I found the questionable Aladdin file and deleted it, but it would appear that I have another errant file that is still screwing with the update_prebinding process. Any one come across other files that cause this?

Time to go on a scavenger hunt for a hidden file...
krove

------------------
*The next sentence is entirely true...
*The previous sentence is most decidedly false...

[krove]

Well, after using the fs_usage on the update_prebinding process two more times, I found the errant files (an Icon Factory folder that started with an upside-down "!" and another ??Aladdin Transaction??Info file hanging in another folder. After changing the name of the folder and deleting that Aladdin file, update_prebinding worked as expected.

krove

------------------
*The next sentence is entirely true...
*The previous sentence is most decidedly false...

I have tried all of the commands and fixes listed above, but I still can't find the offending file. I have included the final excerpt from terminal below. Any ideas on where to go from here?
-----------
0.000152 update_prebindin
11:24:06.118 lstat Documents/index.html.ru.utf8 0.000149 update_prebindin
11:24:06.123 lstat rver/Documents/index.html.se 0.004581 W update_prebindin
11:24:06.123 lstat Documents/index.html.tw.Big5 0.000197 update_prebindin
11:24:06.123 lstat y/WebServer/Documents/manual 0.000080 update_prebindin
11:24:06.123 lstat /Network 0.000082 update_prebindin
11:24:06.124 open F=3 /Network 0.000187 W update_prebindin
11:24:06.137 getdirentries F=3 B=0x60 0.013506 W update_prebindin
11:24:06.137 getdirentries F=3 B=0x0 0.000022 update_prebindin
11:24:06.137 close F=3 0.000121 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 lstat /Network/Applications 0.000146 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 open F=3 /Network/Applications 0.000053 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 getdirentries F=3 B=0x18 0.000047 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 getdirentries F=3 B=0x0 0.000008 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 close F=3 0.000040 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 lstat /Network/Library 0.000072 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 open F=3 /Network/Library 0.000048 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 getdirentries F=3 B=0x18 0.000034 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 getdirentries F=3 B=0x0 0.000008 update_prebindin
11:24:06.138 close F=3 0.000038 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 lstat /Network/Servers 0.001058 W update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 lstat /Network/Users 0.000101 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 open F=3 /Network/Users 0.000050 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 getdirentries F=3 B=0x18 0.000041 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 getdirentries F=3 B=0x0 0.000008 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 close F=3 0.000040 update_prebindin
0.000189 update_prebindin /OpenFolderListDF
11:24:06.140 lstat /PNFIconGraphics 0.000090 update_prebindin
11:24:06.140 open F=3 /PNFIconGraphics 0.000043 update_prebindin
11:24:06.201 getdirentries F=3 B=0x158 0.060943 W update_prebindin
11:24:06.202 getdirentries F=3 B=0x0 0.000027 update_prebindin
11:24:06.202 close F=3
-----------------------------------------

Originally posted by krove:
Well, after using the fs_usage on the update_prebinding process two more times, I found the errant files (an Icon Factory folder that started with an upside-down "!" and another ??Aladdin Transaction??Info file hanging in another folder. After changing the name of the folder and deleting that Aladdin file, update_prebinding worked as expected.

krove