Musings

10.4.9

For the most part, Macs “just work.” And one tends to forget, after a while, that one is supposed to be circumspect and cautious in updating one’s System software.

I was reminded, briefly, of how the other half lives by the MacOSX 10.4.9 update. I installed it via “Software Update…” and, afterwards, a variety of glitches appeared.

• The keyboard volume controls no longer functioned.

• Mounting Disk Images no longer worked, either by double-clicking on the .dmg or at the commandline. Typing

   % hdiutil mount foo.dmg
  

  yielded the rather ominous

   load_hdi: timed out waiting for driver to load
   load_hdi: timed out waiting for driver to load
   ...
  

Dang! This meant that it would not even help to download the Combo updater, and try doing the update again (an oft-recommended cure for random ailments).

Instead, I deleted

  /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache
  /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/

crossed my fingers, and rebooted. Everything worked!