[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.3.9 update problems (unable to write to /tmp)

[Kerem B Limon]

This issue is now resolved. The culprit: RAM. The way to diagnose...troublesome
and very, very annoying. It may, however, affect machines you have, so read on.
Notice also I do not say 'defective RAM', although I do suspect it is the case.
Here's a long why not:

For others benefit, I spent a bit of time digging out details on this type of
error. Apparently, the "permissions error" has reared its ugly head quite a few
times for many users since 10.3.8. There was also one mention of this on the
MacFixit or MacNN pages yesterday without a resolution. The recommendations to
deal with it so far (at least according the Apple Discussions) involve:

- repairing permissions
- moving a copy of the tar binary to the Software Update cache directory
- clearing the Software Update cache
- deleting Software Update plists
- manually creating Software Update cache directories
- deleting and recreating the /tmp -> /private/tmp softlink
- Downloading update packages from Software Update app first, then installing
- Downloading the combo updater from the Apple Support site, and installing

all of which I tried to no avail and/or was not necessary because the symptoms
didn't match.

I then checked the console output to see what was there, in addition to the
displayed error dialog, it had:

Mac OS Version 10.3 (Build 7B85)
2005-04-21 09:51:44 -0400
2005-04-21 10:13:25.134 Software Update[360] Error verifying file with signature
/tmp/SoftwareUpdate.nMqOVd/signature
2005-04-21 10:13:25.197 Software Update[360]
session:itemDidFail:MacOSXUpdateCombo10.3.9-10.3.9 (Make sure you have
permission to write to /tmp/501/TemporaryItems/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate, then
try again.)

which then made me wonder if the signature not being verified had something to
do with some file corruption happening. I wondered if the Apple .pkg file I was
getting from this particular distribution site was corrupt--I remembered a
reference to a corrupt version on one of the Mac sites the other day. I found
that the file hieratchy under
/Users/<username>/Library/Caches/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate/ -or- the contents of
/private/tmp/SoftwareUpdateCheck.suresults contain references to the Akamai
sites where the co-hosted .pkg file is. I tried downloading that via Safari
manually. It did indeed download, but then the downloaded archive had trouble
untarring the first time, then produced output a second. I next went to
download the Combo Updater .dmg image from the Apple Support site, to compare
the two .pkg files. That download went fine, but the image wouldn't mount. A
sha1 digest check indicated the downloaded file had a different checksum.
Repeated attempts to download the file (4-5) times, all completed fine, but
each download had a different and incorrect checksum, hence there was some
corruption going on.

This system is a Power Mac G4 Mirrored Drive Doors. It was originally benched
due to apparent serious filesystem corruption beyond DiskWarrior repair (which
complained of 300,000+ overlapping files) while the system would boot fine and
most things would work, data was intact and could be copied off, etc. Since the
hard drive, when removed and checked in a PC with the manufacturer diagnostics
was 100% OK, I suspected the RAM or the chipset/IDE controller.

I next borrowed a matching DDR DIMM from a PC and swapped with the stick in the
machine. After rebooting, all of the downloads and decompression completed
fine, and all checksums were verified. Restoring the original DIMM in the
machine causes the corruption to happen again.

Apple's own bundled, recommended TechTool Deluxe diagnostic checks this system
out as 100% OK, including memory tests. I did that even before this issue came
up. Hence, there may be other machines out there affected by the same issue
gone undetected. The filesystem corruption in our case was severe.

Perhaps this is just RAM defective in a genuinely interesting and sneaky way, or
it is yet another RAM compatibility issue as has happened before. Regardless,
it's stock RAM and stock hardware, so I'm quite puzzled and annoyed.

Now off to scream at Apple to get this swapped ASAP.

-Kerem



Quoting Albert Willis <awillis at MIT.EDU>:

> 
> On Apr 20, 2005, at 1:31 PM, Kerem B Limon wrote:
> 
> > I can also try 10.3.9 Combo Updater, downloaded manually, however, 
> > that's sort
> > of beside the point. If the latest combo updater, downloaded via the 
> > automatic
> > update mechanism, _on a fresh install_ no less, fails to work, that's 
> > pretty
> > bad in my book. One would expect at least a bit more quality control 
> > on minor
> > point releases (esp. when they are something like ~120 MB).
> >
> > Back to manual updates, I suppose...:(
> >
> > -Kerem
> > Kerem B. Limon
> > kerem.limon at mit.edu /e-mail
> 
> I feel there wasn't adequate testing by Apple of this particular 
> release. Going from 10.3.8 to 10.3.9 is supposed to be minor, but when 
> you examine what was changed, it's actually quite major.
> 
> For example, there's a new version of Safari (v. 1.3), which fixes many 
> bugs and issues. It's also something like 35% faster than the previous 
> version as well. In fact, it has (mostly) the same rendering engine as 
> Safari 2.0 which will be shipping in Tiger.
> 
> Also, several serious kernel-level security vulnerabilities are also 
> addressed. So, while this hasn't been the best handled release for Mac 
> OS X, there's a decent trade-off for dealing with 10.3.9's issues.
> 
> This release is taking more time than usual to shakeout; please send 
> e-mail to the list if you encounter more issues.
> 
> More on Safari 1.3: 
> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#007962
> 
> Security issues fixed in 10.3.9: 
> http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301327.
> 
>    -- Al
> 
> ______________________________
> Albert Willis
> Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
> Information Services and Technology
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> awillis at mit.edu
> 
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> 


Kerem B. Limon
kerem.limon at mit.edu /e-mail