[Macpartners] Mac OS 10.3 Update

[Albert Willis]

There's a problem with FireWire 800 drives and Mac OS X 10.3. You'll  
need to get a firmware upgrade from your drive manufacturer. Apple has  
the details at  
http://www.apple.com/macosx/firewire800specialmessage.html.

Also, some people are experiencing problems with FireWire 400 drives.  
It's not clear that if these are related to the FireWire 800 problems  
or something different. In any case, if you are testing Mac OS X 10.3,  
you should backup your files if you're using 10.3 on a machine that  
contains data you care about or with an external FireWire drive that  
contains data you care about.

There's a problem with the FileVault feature as well--it can corrupt  
files in your home directory. The best way to avoid these problems is  
to not use FileVault at this time. You can read more about FileVault's  
problems at  
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/11/03/filevaultissue/ 
index.php?redirect=1068205939000.

The Information Systems has a Mac OS X 10.3 known issues page that  
we're keeping up to date at http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6646.

Summary: don't use Mac OS X 10.3 on a production machine. Backup your  
files. Don't use FileVault. Upgrade the firmware on any FireWire 800  
drives you may own.


   -- Al


______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator
Software Release Team
MIT Information Systems