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Upgrading to Leopard

Posted 21 Nov 2007 in technology

The last few days have been… um, interesting.

Last week, I bought the new Mac OSX, code named Leopard. I am usually a first-adopter of technology, especially as it relates to the Mac. But financial considerations forced me to forgo the standing-in-line event surrounding the release of Steve Jobs’ newest offering to the Mac faithful. After having received one of the paychecks for which I’ve been hounding my clients for the past 60 days, I was finally in a position to bump up the RAM in my 3-year-old iMac to 1.5 GB and began making preparations to install the new operating system. And by preparations, I mean backing up every file on my hard drive.

Good thing I’m so paranoid.

Not that the new OS isn’t awesome, ’cause it is. It’s everything I had hoped. Except for one small item. Something Apple buried deep in the Read Me file but overlooked in the installation process. Namely, if your home directory is protected with FileVault (which mine was), you have to manually turn it off before upgrading or else all your data becomes corrupted.

Three guesses as to whether I read every last word of the ReadMe file or simply read through the highlights and the installation booklet?

Yep, all my files became corrupt. Something about how the keychain password isn’t compatible with the new OS. And it causes the user profile to become completely inaccessible. I was able to sign in at first, but upon my next sign-in, I was greeted with a dandy little error message informing me that my FileVault-protected home folder did not open and needs to be repaired. After following the prompts, the folder refused to be repaired or open. So I was locked out of my own computer.

Luckily, I was able to sign in to one of my kids’ accounts, enable Admin privileges and create a new profile for myself. From there, I Googled “Mac OS X Leopard FileVault” and found that this has happened to several other users. I managed to get around it by using a combination of solutions. First, I restored most of my settings and files from my backup. It took about 10 hours, but that got the majority of the important things (photos, music, settings) back on my hard drive. Then I had to reboot the computer in safe mode, log into my new account and navigate to the corrupted archive in my other account. When I double-clicked it to open, I was greeted with a message that opening the corrupted archive could damage my system (WTF!?) but I opened it anyway. There were all my files! I copied everything over to my new external drive as a redundant backup just in case. And now, everything seems to be running fine.

I’m still plenty pissed that Apple didn’t make it a part of the installer to check for FileVault protection and warn against installation in its current state. But luckily, between having a decent working knowledge of the Mac (and some help from Google), I was able to get everything running again. Note to self: don’t use FileVault ever again. And read EVERY FREAKIN’ THING in the ReadMe before running an upgrade. Never assume that software engineers have thought of everything.

Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT

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