More Leopard FUN

The only reason I did not install Leopard on my personal machine on the first day it was released was that my personal machine has an optical drive that keeps on ejecting discs. Again. But tonight I got the cat to purr as it should.

OK, so how did I manage to get Leo installed? Four very important words to the Mac Geek: Firewire Target Disc Mode. "FWTDM" allows a Mac to boot up and say to all the world that it is nothing but a hard disk. When that Mac (the "target") is connected via Firewire (aka IEEE 1394, if you're keeping score) to another Mac booted normally into OS X, the target disk is treated like another external disk -- it is visible on the desktop and accessible through the Finder (the Mac answer to Windows Explorer).

FWTDM is a godsend for those times when a drive will be recognized and "mount" (become accessable by the Finder) but you cannot boot from that drive into Mac OS X. You can use it for data rescue (most common use). Another use for FWTDM is for times when you want to mount optical discs from one Mac's optical drive to one where the optical is nonfunctional on the targeted system.

So all i needed to do is borrow a Firewire cable and wait until after work to use my iMac workstation's optical drive to install my copy of Leopard onto this system.

That is the theory.

Install attempt number 1: I got clever and did an Archive and Install preserving instead of the usual upgrade install. One of my favorite tech sites suggested it, and their reasons made sense to me. Sadly for me, the AC power glitched enough to shut off the targeted iMac (the MacBook didn't blink thanks to the battery). Installus Interruptus. Welcome to my nightmare scenario. This is a bad place to be; most of the time this is a reformat. The MacBook, predictably enough, booted to the classic "Apple / Gear" screen that is the hallmark of damaged system files or filesystem. If damaged files, no worries, a straight archive and install fixes that. If damaged filesystem, then I'd have to reformat the drive, lose everything on the system, and reinstall. Your basic nuke and pave reinstall. Fortunately, Disk Utility dubbed the filesystem to be OK. Dodged that bullet!

Attempt number 2: Archive and install preserving user settings. Worked fine until I tried to log into my user account -- bad password. Tried to reset it with the Password reset utility, and it would not reset. Disk util said things were still OK with the filesystem, thank Eris. Then the MacBook started kernel panicking (BSOD for you Windows users). Ick. Deja Vu all over again.

Attempt number 3: OK, I decided then and there to do one more A&I, but this time NOT preserving the user account. If this install screwed the pooch, it was time to bite the bullet and nuke it from orbit. This install was smooth as glass. The system booted to first time setup as usual, Made a brand new account with the exact same name as my old one and a four letter password (fsck, of course). Lo and behold, the MacBook booted to the Leo desktop.

Thirty minutes of user account migration and a password change in System prefs later, my email, bookmarks, address book, documents, wireless peripherals, Bluetooth enabled phone, and World of Warcraft were working perfectly. Not to mention iPhoto and the uber-neat Screen Sharing feature. Now to make sure that I install Palm Desktop (Arch and install ALWAYS breaks Palm Desktop's Transport Monitor), my printer drivers (nice thing about leo is that the open-source Gutenprint driver set I use with my "OEM drivers for Windows ONLY" printer (HA!) is now included with a standard install) and a few other apps I can download form the Internet and I'll be jake.

Not to mention that none of the 'puters on which I have Leo installed on have taken any kind of performance hit. Startup is still fast and there are a few strange behaviors. The only major casualty of the install has been my Windows partition because the arch and installs eat disk space.

Oh well, Windows can wait until I get the optical fixed.

Not a bad night's worth of hands-on teching!