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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Upgrades Apple

Mac OS X 10.3.4 Released 166

Posted by pudge from the get-it-while-it's-hot dept.
sizemoresr writes "The 10.3.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 'Panther' and is recommended for all users. Key enhancements include: improved file sharing and directory services for Mac (AFP), UNIX (NFS), PPTP, and wireless networks; improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers; improved disc burning and recording functionality; iPods connected via USB 2.0 are now recognized by iTunes and iSync; additional FireWire audio and USB device compatibility; updated Address Book, Mail, Safari, Stickies, and QuickTime applications; improved compatibility for third party applications; previous standalone security updates."
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Mac OS X 10.3.4 Released More

Mac OS X 10.3.4 Released

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  • FP!
    However, I wish Apple would provide more information on their updates. They are so generalized.
    If they're serious about the Enterprise space, this is a must do.

  • The question is.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Carlos Silva ( 773727 ) <carlos.silvaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:25PM (#9262574) Journal
    Can I grab it off Limewire?

  • I installed it (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoA ... inus threevowels> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:29PM (#9262624) Journal
    now my hair is falling out, food doesn't taste good anymore, and all my bath towels are missing!

    On the plus side, it now only takes 19 minutes to copy that damn file.

    I guess it's not all bad...

    • Re:I installed it (Score:5, Funny)

      by Entropy2016 ( 751922 ) <entropy2016@yahoo . c om> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:12PM (#9263027)
      Geek: New update ... geek urge ... rising ... must resist ... temptation to be update early ...

      Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin: (whispering) From our hiding spot behind this potted plant, we can get a good view of a geek trying to resist his instinct to update his computer. One has to be extremely careful when handling a common Windows geek, since they quite often carry diseases like worms, but this geek appears to come from either a Linux or Mac colony. It looks like this one is fairly calm, possibly domesticated, since he's been showing some self-control ...

      But watch what happens when I yell "new features" ...

  • No fix on recent exploits (Score:5, Informative)

    by jeffasselin ( 566598 ) <cormacolinde@gma i l . com> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:30PM (#9262631) Journal
    From what I could see by carefully reading the technical info on it, it doesn't appear to fix the recently discovered protocol handler exploits, apart from the earlier fix for the help: exploit (which doesn't appear to cure ALL help: exploits).

    These exploits are serious, and will require a significant overhaul of the protocol handler code as well as a possible revision on the handling of downloadable disc images in Safari (which is a factor in many of the exploits). Yes, they could have waited, but if 10.3.4 was already ready, I'd prefer for Apple to release it on time and give us the fixes they can right now, and then work on the recent problems to provide us a good security patch (or maybe a 10.3.5) when they've fixed it.

    • Re:No fix on recent exploits (Score:5, Informative)

      by ghutchis ( 7810 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:34PM (#9262685) Homepage
      No, I've upgraded and can confirm it does not fix any exploits that were not fixed by the recent security update patch (i.e., only the help/runscript exploit).

      I'd agree that a careful overhaul is needed to properly fix these exploits. But the clock is ticking on the exploit problem!

      -Geoff

    • Exploits are Fixed (Score:3, Informative)

      by EverLurking ( 595528 )
      If you try the various example exploit links, you will find that while the remote disk images/ftp servers do mount, none of the ssh, applescript or other commands on them are executed. Thus the URL Handler exploit hole appears for now appears to be a non-issue while retaining the convenience of being able to mount remote files/disk images.

      See this post [slashdot.org] for the links to the exploit examples I tested against. (I had not modified any of my URL handlers at all, and had already uninstalled "Paranoid Android"

    • Re:No fix on recent exploits (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdot@pudge. n e t> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:40PM (#9263230) Homepage Journal
      These exploits are serious, and will require a significant overhaul of the protocol handler code

      They are serious, but most of the fixes belong in the apps, not the underlying OS services. [slashdot.org] It's a matter of filtering unsafe data so it cannot be used for unsafe operations, in the individual applications. That, or disabling the handlers.

      Yes, they could have waited, but if 10.3.4 was already ready, I'd prefer for Apple to release it on time and give us the fixes they can right now, and then work on the recent problems to provide us a good security patch (or maybe a 10.3.5) when they've fixed it.

      Totally agreed. I prefer Apple's "release when ready" rather than "lump all our releases together" approach to security fixes.

  • Thanks! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Apiakun ( 589521 ) <tikora AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:30PM (#9262634)
    Ahh, thank you ssh and apple for allowing me to do this: ($:~)-> softwareupdate -i MacOSXUpdate10.3.4-10.3.4 Now my box will be nice and updated before I even leave work.

    • Re:Thanks! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )
      Dammit, my Ibook is actually on and plugged into the network at home, but the lid is closed, so it ignores me.

      Why can't they make it wake up on ssh connections somehow?

      • Re:Thanks! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by volsung ( 378 ) <stan@mtrr.org> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:24PM (#9263963)
        I'm pretty sure wake-on-lan is possible, but running your iBook with the lid closed is not very good for it. Using pbbuttonsd on Gentoo PPC, I once set the laptop not to sleep with the lid closed. Left for a couple hours while it did some stuff, and when I came back it was really hot! The iBook seems to be designed for heat exchange through the keyboard.

        That said, it would probably be okay if you kept the load low. You can check out Screen Spanning Doctor [rutemoeller.com], which, in addition to enabling dual-head support on some iBooks, will allow you to run the iBook with the lid shut in OS X. Be warned! The dual-head hack only works for some iBooks, and can damage others, so check the compatibility list.

        • Re:Thanks! (Score:5, Informative)

          by Guy Harris ( 3803 ) <guy@alum.mit.edu> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:59PM (#9264154)
          I'm pretty sure wake-on-lan is possible

          It is - see, for example, a knowledgebase article [apple.com] on it - but that's "wake on magic packet" [scyld.com] (or Magic Packet(TM) [amd.com]) wake-on-LAN, not the more general packet matching wakeup that some network interfaces support.

          I.e., the machine won't automatically wake up when you try to ssh into it; you need to send it a Magic Packet(TM) to wake it up. A packet-matching wakeup might be able to match incoming unicast packets to the machine, broadcast ARP requests asking for the MAC address corresponding to the machine's IP address, and other packets that it would need to respond to, so that attempting to ssh into it would wake it up, without making it respond to various random broadcasts and multicasts for which it wouldn't have to wake up (e.g., a broadcast ARP request for somebody else's MAC address, assuming it doesn't have to reply to that for e.g. proxy ARP purposes).

          However, wake-on-Magic-Packet(TM) might be sufficient for the purposes of the person to whom you responded; I think one purpose for which it was intended was to allow administrators to wake up sleeping machines in order to do various remote administrative operations - including the remote software updates that they wanted to do.

          • Re:Thanks! (Score:3, Informative)

            by mdray ( 146020 )

            Yes, wake on magic packet works. I have my ADSL router set up to forward traffic destined for 9/UDP ('discard' port) on the ADSL interface to be sent to the broadcast address (where my Mac will see it) on my LAN.

            I then use wakeonlan [uminho.pt] (perl script) to send a magic packet to the router from the internet, which wakes the Mac up. After this I can ssh in to my Mac (port forward for SSH configured on the ADSL router).

            The only problem is that I only get 30 seconds of connectivity before my Mac goes back to slee

    • That's nice, but how do you run Disk Utility/Repair Permissions first?

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • This should help. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Padrino121 ( 320846 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:34PM (#9262681)
    Apple's KB article on the 10.3.4 update. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=257 64 [apple.com]

  • For what it's worth.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Paladeen ( 8688 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:38PM (#9262721)
    For what it's worth, Safari now reports itself as version 1.2.2 (v125.7).

  • Question (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by chemstar ( 457943 )
    Why doesn't another company do what Apple is doing: take an Open Source structure, and charge for a nice ass desktop environment.

  • I just started this 10.3.4 update and it downloaded very quickly. Much quicker than the 41 mb file size would suggest.

    Does this update skip updates that were already released, downloaded and installed?
    • Also, OS X 10.3 can download updates 'silently' in the background and prompt you when they're ready.

      I wondered why my browsing was so slow, but then Software Update popped up and said 'want 10.3.4?' When I hit 'yes' it skipped the 40MB download, and went straight to 'unzipping and installing'

      YMMV, I think it's off by default.

      Mark

  • URL Handler Exploits appear to be fixed... (Score:5, Informative)

    by EverLurking ( 595528 ) <slash@@@davechen...org> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:50PM (#9262829) Homepage
    Well, rebooted just fine. No issues yet. Browsing and E-mail working well, grabbed my home Wireless 802.11b/g with WPA just fine, if anything, reception is LESS flaky now (fewer dropouts seen on AP Grapher and fewer random loss of connectivity).

    Doesn't seem any slower or faster.

    Most importantly, it looks like some of the URI handler problems/security holes are now patched as well. I had uninstalled the "Paranoid Android" Haxie before the update (to make sure there weren't any install issues) so it was no longer running.

    It looks like none [geekspiff.com] of [unsanity.org] these [insecure.ws] exploits [insecure.ws] seem to work any more after the 10.3.4 update.

    Nice work,

    DaveC

    • Nope, at least this one [geekspiff.com] still works for me...
      • The remote disk image mounts and I can see the AppleScript MalWare program, but it doesn't execute on its own. This is without any protective measures taken (no redefinition of URL Handlers and no 3rd prarty protective programs).

        I was able to run the applescript manually by clicking on it and it brought the "you have been owned" dialogue box, then when you click on the OK button it exits and dismounts the image automatically. So I know I waited long enough for everything to download. Heck I waited like 5 minutes incase of delayed execution. Nope, the hole is closed for me.

        Note, stopping the execution of the remotely mounted program WON'T protect the user from his stupid self if he/she blindly executes unknown programs/scripts downloaded indiscriminately from the internet, but then again, nothing can protect a dumb ass from themselves.

        Caveat Emptor,

        DaveC

      • Note: I do have the Safari Preference "Open Safe files after downloading" UNCHECKED.

        I actually have always had this unchecked even before the discovery of the URL handler exploits, it just seemed a bit unnerving to me for my Browser to be running stuff for me. Way too....er....Microsoft to be comforting.

        DaveC

        • wait, so did the exploits work on you BEFORE you updated/installed the patches.
          • Yes they did work pre 10.3.4, that's what prompted me to use Paranoid Android. I had uninstalled Paranoid Android before updating to 10.3.4

            Again, I've tried all four links and none autoexecute, they just bring up the remote .dmg or ftp folder with the example code in them. NONE of these programs executed for me.

            Is this some residual side effect of having had Paranoid Android on my computer? (ie. are there lasting changes despite having it uninstalled that keeps these programs from running? Paranoid Android used to bring up a confirmation dialog when I clicked on the "Open Energy Saver..." menu option of my Menu Bar Battery Icon asking if it was ok for a URL type file to be executed with System Preferences. Now that it's uninstalled, it no longer does that so I KNOW Paranoid Android is now completely gone, even went into /Library and delete the Haxie PreferencePane.) A few others have reported that the URL Handler exploit doesn't work anymore after the update.

            I did NOT previously modify any URI Handlers by hand nor did I delete any applications prior to this update. If being protected is an isolated effect, I'm glad I got lucky I guess.

            DaveC

          • Re:URL Handler Exploits appear to be fixed... (Score:4, Informative)

            by cft_128 ( 650084 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:13PM (#9263889)
            On my 'virgin' 10.3.3 machine unchecking "Open Safe files after downloading" in Safari preferences stops at least this [geekspiff.com] exploit. No matter what it mounts the image, but with "Open Safe files after downloading" unchecked it will not run the script that is in the image.

          • I was being protected by Privoxy!!! (Score:5, Informative)

            by EverLurking ( 595528 ) <slash@@@davechen...org> on Thursday May 27, 2004 @03:49AM (#9265051) Homepage
            I finally figured out why I wasn't getting hit by the sample exploit code when others were. It was Privoxy preventing auto-refreshes that executed the code after mounting the image. Not a bad side effect really. I must have had Privoxy Disabled when I was testing the exploits out on 10.3.3

            OK, so my setup is apparently somewhat resistant for now, not bullet proof but nice to know: 10.3.4, disabled the "Open Safe files" option, running Privoxy (which is set to default actions)

            The help viewer URL problem is apparently patched and so is the SSL hole (according to another post on this page) so that is a comfort. Not the cleanest fix but in my case it works well.

            Sorry for the wild goosechase or if I mislead anyone into thinking the problem had completely disappeared. On first inspection, it REALLY did seem to me that I wasn't vulnerable...well I wasn't, but no thanks to Apple.

            DaveC

    • Can anyone confirm this? There's nothing that I see in the technote about it. The only security note there is that 10.3.4 incorporates previous security updates. Which means the help: vulnerability is solved (with an updated application) but not telnet:, ssh:, disk:, etc. Do you still have RCDefault Apps installed after the upgrade?

      It seems odd to me that they would fix such a major security flaw so quickly and quietly. I mean, I'd expect them to toot their horn at least a little bit about it....

    • ALL exploits still work under 10.3.4 (Score:5, Informative)

      by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:51PM (#9263310)
      I've put up a test page at http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ [wisc.edu], and the exploit still works via afp, ftp, disk, and downloadable file in the default configuration of Mac OS X 10.3.4.

      To protect yourself, you still MUST:

      - disable "open safe files after download" in Safari

      - disable the following protocols (or reassign to a helper other than Finder):

      afp
      ftp
      disk
      disks

      and additionally:

      telnet
      ssh

      and/or install Paranoid Android [haxies.com]

      Hopefully Apple will find a reasonable resolution for this soon.
      • Tried all those links, none auto execute the programs on the auto-mounted directories. Beginning to think this is a residual effect of having had Paranoid Android on my system.

        DaveC

      • Can't speak for the others, but I've done some experimenting, and the ssh:// one at least is fixed. LaunchServices now passes the entire URL specified as the URL to connect to instead of letting it get parsed as ssh's command-line, so that exploit should be closed, unless someone a lot more cunning than I can figure out how to break it.

      • Re:ALL exploits still work under 10.3.4 (Score:5, Informative)

        by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @08:00PM (#9264156)
        RCDefaultApp [rubicode.com] is a simpler way to take care of this. It installs as a Preference Pane, and lets you assign default handlers to (or unassociate completely) the various protocols like afp:, disk:, etc.

        As a bonus you can use it to change your default browser without first having to launch Safari. :-)
    • It looks like none of these exploits seem to work any more after the 10.3.4 update.

      That doesn't mean anything.. those exploits didn't work before because the DMGs are damaged.

      I'd actually be very concerned if Apple fixed the URI handler problems with 10.3.4, because that would mean that they've officially abandoned Jaguar.
      • I'd actually be very concerned if Apple fixed the URI handler problems with 10.3.4, because that would mean that they've officially abandoned Jaguar.

        how would it mean that? cos they might have fixed a bug in 10.3 doesn't mean that they won't fix it in 10.2 later. I beleive that this often happens, fix in latest first, catch up with the older os later.

        dave
    • I have to throw in another negative data point. It didn't seem to work here.
    • The FTP exploit worked in Safari, but not firefox. The disk image one didn't work ion either. The help viewer one only poened the help viewer in both, it never did anything else. The ssh one didn't do anything in firefox and when opened from safari, ssh did open, but died with an error. The second time, nothing happened.

    • i never installed Paranoid Android or any other third party app to address this issue. A few minutes ago, I tested all the exploits in this post [slashdot.org] and confirmed they worked in 10.3.3.

      Then I just ran the software update and installed 10.3.4 and went back to test those same exploits, and they still work: test.app does get launched, shows me a warning with t3h [suck] button, and places owned.txt in my home directory.

      in conclusion: 10.3.4 does NOT fix those vulnerabilities.

      Has anybody heard from Apple o

  • FireWire Audio devices... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sneeka2 ( 782894 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:05PM (#9262969)
    Well, it really seems to improve compatibility with my M-Audio Firewire 410 audio card. It now connects immediately, where before I had to try at least twice most of the time. Also the preferences are saved more reliably it seems, where before you needed to be lucky and do some odd standby/reboot combinations for preferences to be saved...

    Thanks Apple!
  • 10.3 broke PPTP which I need to connect to my ISP (via cable), now they added an option to disable encryption (apparently MPPE [faqs.org]) and that fixed it.
    For connecting in 10.3.3 I had to use a shell script but now it works from the GUI too.

  • anacron-like update? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrgeometry ( 689087 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @05:51PM (#9263306)
    From http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=257 64 [apple.com]:

    Addresses an issue in which scheduled items, such as automated backups or Software Update checks, may not work if the computer is asleep at the scheduled time. With this update, the schedule will run once the computer wakes from sleep.

    What about the periodic scripts (daily, weekly, monthly)? Is anacron now unnecessary?

    zach

    • Anyone know what even it watches for to know that it just woke from sleep?

      Or does it do sleep math.

    • I'd assume that this issue addresses the various OS X schedules, and not the Darwin cron daemon. The cron daemon is what drives the periodics scripts.

      From a look at the Archive.bom file, cron was not touched in this update.

      Of course, it's possible that Apple has some OS X specific hack around the cron way of doing things that was fixed in one of the other many files that this update affected.

      I see no evidence to suggest this, however.

  • Safari is way faster (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeffehobbs ( 419930 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:04PM (#9263429) Homepage
    and I bet it's a result of this. [mozillazine.org]

    This algorithm completely transforms the feel of Safari over DSL and modem connections. Page content usually comes screaming in at the 250ms mark, and if the page isn't quite ready at the 250ms, it's usually ready shortly after (at the 300-500ms mark). In the rare cases where you have nothing to display, you wait until the 1 second mark still. This algorithm makes "white flashing" quite rare (you'll typically only see it on a very slow site that is taking a long time to give you data), and it makes Safari feel orders of magnitude faster on slower network connections.

    Because Safari waits for a minimum threshold (and waits to schedule until the threshold is exceeded, benchmarks won't be adversely affected as long as you typically beat the minimum threshold. Otherwise the overall page load speed will degrade slightly in real-world usage, but I believe that to be well-worth the decrease in the time required to show displayable content.

    • Re:Safari is way faster (Score:4, Informative)

      by pualo ( 668798 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:54AM (#9264452)
      This change is not present in the 10.3.4 version of Safari. Dave Hyatt writes in the comments to his blog [mozillazine.org]:
      It's a placebo. The Safari in 10.3.4 contains only a handful of fixes and is no faster than previous versions.
      He also later writes/;
      I suppose something could have made it faster. In our internal tests it's no faster. As far as WebCore code, there are a slew of bugs fixes, but those are mostly for the regressions from 1.1.

  • 10.3.4 update on DualG5... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BobWeiner ( 83404 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:17PM (#9263528) Homepage Journal
    ...installed without any issue on both Dual G5 and single processor G5 systems. Initial impressions -- my Dual G5 system does appear to run snappier -- GUI response even better than it was in 10.3.3 -- no doubt the result of the improved video drivers in the update. No problems with the update whatsoever -- the update downloaded in a few minutes with a broadband condition.

  • Accidentally installed it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SkiingOnMars ( 702435 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:23PM (#9263573) Journal
    I was re-installing panther on a new hard disk for my cube, and did the software update thing after i got it running. When I saw 10.3.4 update, i was blankly confused, but clicked ahead anyway for some reason. Now, two hours later, I'm reading Slashdot and realizing that there actually was a new update today, and feeling like a software-installing Forrest Gump, happening to be at the 'right' place at the 'right' time.

    Everything is cool so far, but I feel like a total idiot for not noticing. And yet I feel compelled to tell this to other people...

  • Safari (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zpok ( 604055 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @06:47PM (#9263726) Homepage
    Damn, Safari is fast!!!!

    Updated on Cube - against better judgement, for better firewire drive compatibility - and all seems well...

  • Anyone here maliciously hit? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scienceninja ( 670036 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:06PM (#9263850)
    Alot of the comments so far have been "I hope the exploit was fixed." But was anyone actually hit by the exploit in a malicious manner. Granted, its something that should be patched, but what has the demand for it been like? Other than the example links floating around, I havn't really seen it anywhere else.

    • Re:Anyone here maliciously hit? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bw5353 ( 775333 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @12:46AM (#9264389) Homepage
      "But was anyone actually hit by the exploit in a malicious manner. Granted, its something that should be patched, but what has the demand for it been like? Other than the example links floating around, I havn't really seen it anywhere else. "

      The demand was the same one as for you to have a working lock on your front door when you buy a new house, even if there may be no burglars around right then right there.

      I'm sure no one has been hit for real. We would have heard about it at /.

  • Version Numbering Schemes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Halfbaked Plan ( 769830 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @07:43PM (#9264083)
    It sounds like Apple isn't going to retire the 'Version 10' on their current MacOS version anytime soon. Will they indefinitely release .dot versions? It's not a negative question, nor is it necessarily a bad thing for them to do so.

    NetBSD is still at version 1 (1.6.2 is the latest I am running) and Solaris has been at version 2 through all the versions (2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, etc.) for years, even though they call 2.8 Solaris 8.

    Just an interesting thing to ponder. There's enough difference between the initial MacOS X release and the current release that they should definitely have different version numbers.
    • There's enough difference between the initial MacOS X release and the current release that they should definitely have different version numbers.

      Compared to OS 8.5 vs OS 9, I would definitely agree. But then again I always considered 9 to be what 8.6 should have been, and never actually bought it (until it came bundled wth 10.1 and my next mac).

      So I guess what I'm trying to say is that while it's more worthy of a version number update than past releases, those past releases didn't deserve it either.

      Oh,
  • I'm at work at the moment and won't be able to update until later this evening. In the meantime, could someone who's both upgraded and is a PithHelmet user let me know if it still works?

    Thanks,
    Ian

  • X11 (Score:3, Informative)

    by pr0nbot ( 313417 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @07:17AM (#9265574)
    With multiple monitors, X11 applications now seem to start in the primary monitor rather than in the leftmost monitor.
  • Safari may now seem faster but table copies are *still* broken. To see this, copy a table in Safari and then paste it into excel. What have Apple got against tabs.

    This is a real show stopper for me since I often generate tables from a web database and need to paste the results into excel.

    What is worse, this was fixed in a much earlier version of Safari and was then broken again and has remained so ever since.

    I have used the Bug button to report this many times but apparently these go unread....sigh... ti

  • Two questions regarding a G5 Xserve with 10.3.3 Server:
    (1) Is this update for Server or only the client version of OS X?
    (2) Will this or other updates make changes to/overwrite existing configuration files that have been customized? (Specifically httpd.conf, php.ini, and the default /Library/WebServer/Documents directory)

    In general what are best practicices for applying patches to production environments?

    • There are separate releases of the 10.3.4 update for BOTH the client and server versions of X 10.3. SoftwareUpdate should take care of this "automagically" for you.

      As for importance in a production environment, I would guess this set of patches/updates coming up are VERY important because of the holes in the operating system - leaving those unpatched leaves your entire network at risk. Best to depoly the patches on a test machine, and once everything checks out - deploy to all machines on the network th

  • I had made a suggestion to Apple that the iCal icon should always show the current day when the program is running; it switches from the default July 17 (or whatever it is) to the current day *when you start the program*, but the icon never changes again, and it was a habit I got into very quickly to look at the dock to see what the date was instead of clicking on the time in the menu bar.

    There clearly exists code to update the icon while the program is running (the 9 fills from the bottom to the top when

  • After reading through the updates (Score:3, Funny)

    by aflat362 ( 601039 ) on Thursday May 27, 2004 @08:47AM (#9266013) Homepage
    After reading through the updates, I have no need for any of the updates or fixes.

    Yet I feel as though I need to leave my cube, drive home, open my PowerBook and get it updated as soon as possible.

  • Being the caution dweeb that I am, I not only immediately installed 10.3.4, but I felt compelled to dock my iPod during the install.

    Yeah - the predictable happened. Mouse pointer freeze and all. Leaving me with a honked installation that won't boot.

    I rebooted to OS9 & downloaded the standalone, reinstalled 10.3 on a different partition [I would have fixed it singleuser, but installer was giving me "Carbon Lazy Values"] and ran:

    installer -pkg MacOS10.3.4blahblah.pkg -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/

    Then I

  • Anybody using uControl [gnufoo.org]? I can't update until I know my caps -> control change will still work. 1.4.3 is the latest release, but it's for 10.3.x -> 10.3.3.
  • Is anyone else with the updates getting minor refresh problems with Photoshop 7.01 especially when dealing with text. These refresh problems makes me feel like I am running windows, and I dont like it.
  • I installed the update, and my desktop directory decided to digest its contents. It's now completely empty.
  • The 10.3.4 update ran smoothly for me until the installer asked me to click the "Restart" butter to reboot the system. I clicked it, and clicked it again but the system stayed up. I ran "top" and saw that SecurityAgent was running, chewing up 50-60% of the CPU. I went off to dinner and returned a half-hour later and SecurityAgent was still running. The system would not be restarted with the GUI no-way no-how, so I used "sudo reboot". The system rebooted and apparently all is well.

    There were two users

  • This one hosed my PowerBook (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Friday May 28, 2004 @01:32PM (#9279441) Journal
    I've only been an MacOS X user for about two years now. But, all my previous upgrades have worked well. This upgrade installed fine on my Cube, but my PowerBook didn't like it at all.

    My Cube installed the patch, and gave me the dialog box asking me to reboot. My PowerBook installed it, and at some point near the end of the install (maybe the "Optimizing Volume" step) it froze the machine, with the message saying "You need to reset this machine. Hold down the power button for several seconds." So, I did that and it rebooted to the login screen. When I entered my password it dropped me to the Darwin text console login screen. If I entered a password there, it denied my login and brought be back to the GUI login screen.

    After monkeying with that a while, I copied my data off the machine by booting it in firewire disk mode. Then I reinstalled OS X from the restore disk. When I ran software update and tried to install it again, I got the same system freeze and reset machine message (it happened at 97% of the optimizing volume step). Fortunately, this time it rebooted fine. But, my confidence in OS X has gone down quite a bit now.
  • Its always a good idea to repair permissions as well as booting off of the install cd and repairing any hard drive issues. This saves a lot of headaches.

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