15:33 > I expect some apps that have stuff in /Library may need a reinstall though. First close down all applications. I can't even force quit the two copies of Retrospect running (that's another reason I'm doing a reinstall). Wait for Time Machine to complete its backup in progress. - Tom Sheppard

15:35 > This is going to be a long process so make sure my iPod is synced with latest podcasts to while away the time. - Tom Sheppard

15:40 > Trying to sync iPod Touch. Hung. Try to eject 2G Shuffle. Hung. Good ol' iTunes. These are the kind of problems that may not be fixed by an OS reinstall. Force quit iTunes. Visions of Windows keep flashing through my head like a migraine. - Tom Sheppard

15:43 > Time Machine backup completed. Try to use menu bar icon to launch prefs to turn it off. Just the spinning beachball of death. Try to launch System Prefs from Apple menu. Hung. Clearly I need to reboot, then complete backups. What a great start. - Tom Sheppard

15:44 > Restarting computer from Apple Menu. Get the confirmation window and then — nothing. Time for the 6-second power button salute! - Tom Sheppard

Managed to force quit some apps, others absolute refuse to quit. Uh, Apple, what good is a force quit if it doesn't work? Trying to restart from Apple Menu again. Just showing desktop background now. Waiting … waiting … - Tom Sheppard

15:50 > No go. Had to use 6-second power button salute. Restarting now. Can't restart with Shift key down to disable extensions because I need Retrospect Client extension to do backup from server. - Tom Sheppard

15:56 > MacBook rebooted. Try syncing iPods again. Turn off Time Machine. - Tom Sheppard

15:56 > Damn! Time Machine started another backup before I could turn it off. Why? It's been less than an hour. Grrr. - Tom Sheppard

15:59 > iPod syncs complete. I feel so — so — lucky. Waiting for Time Machine to finish. I don't want to risk stopping it prematurely. - Tom Sheppard

16:01 > Now where is that iPod Touch clear plastic stand? Hunting … - Tom Sheppard

16:05 > Still waiting for Time Machine to finish. Watching one of my favourite podcasts, The Apple Byte, with one of my favourite hosts, Brian Tong. Ironically, it's the episode about Snow Leopard. - Tom Sheppard

16:17 > Time Machine finally exited Preparing… state. Watching BOL video podcast episode 1009 where Tom Merritt says Canada Day is on July 2nd. FAIL! It's July 1st. Not to worry. Americans know next to nothing about Canada so only being one day off ain't too bad. - Tom Sheppard

16:23 > Finally! Time Machine has finished. Turn it off and start a Retrospect backup from the server. - Tom Sheppard

16:27 > Start Immediate Backup in Retrospect. Fails immediately saying it can't talk to the MacBook. Ah yes, the famous bug in the Retrospect Client where it turns itself off after a reboot and needs to be manually turned on. Has the latest version of Retrospect fixed that? I'll never know as I'm too cheap to give EMC any more money after they abandoned Retrospect for so long and have ridiculous upgrade fees. OK, so Client is turned on now. - Tom Sheppard

16:28 > Retrospect is scanning the MacBook. The backup server is a dual 2.3 GHz G5 with 4 GB memory talking to the August 2008 MacBook (why doesn't Apple give us easier naming conventions to help identify the model?) over switched gigabit Ethernet. - Tom Sheppard

16:37 > Scanning completed, 219 k folders, 972 k files. Yoiks! - Tom Sheppard

16:45 > Retrospect decided it only needs to backup 697 files (took 8 minutes and how many trillion CPU instructions to figure that out). - Tom Sheppard

16:48 > Backup completed, compressing catalog. - Tom Sheppard

16:54 > Catalog compression completed — finally. Now to figure out what I told Retrospect to ignore during a normal backup and what I may want to keep in case of disaster, like video files, etc. - Tom Sheppard

16:57 > Previewing those files prior to backing them up and may filter out non-essential stuff. This requires another full scan of the almost 1 million files because Retrospect has no memory between backups. - Tom Sheppard

16:59 > Oops, had to stop scan as I forgot to point to a new backup for these non-critical files. Try again. - Tom Sheppard

17:02 > Only have 66 GB free. Hope that's enough. If not, then I'll have to hope nothing goes wrong on reinstall that trashes the non-critical files. - Tom Sheppard

17:24 > 1788 files, 63.7 GB of non-critical files to backup. This will take awhile. - Tom Sheppard

17:38 > Backing up at an average 1150 MB/min. Not too shabby. - Tom Sheppard

18:35 > 71 minutes to finish the backup. Now I should be able to start the install on the MacBook with my butt covered by Retrospect and Time Machine. - Tom Sheppard

18:41 > Booted off the 10.5.0 retail disc. Selected Archive and Install with the option to preserve Users and Network Settings. Hope that fixes most of the problems. Click Customize and deselect the Printer Drivers, Additional Fonts, Language Translations, and X11. - Tom Sheppard

18:45 > Skipped the check of the installation disc since I've used this before on a different computer without problems. The installer is calculating the time remaining. Apple's installers are notorious for giving totally bogus numbers. Let's see how it fares this time. - Tom Sheppard

18:50 > It took the installer about 5 minutes to calculate (guess?) that it will take 1:35 for the install. Oh wait, in the time it took to type that it changed it to 0:56. Maybe it should have taken 6 minutes to do the calculation. - Tom Sheppard

18:56 > 6 minutes later and the time should be 0:50 remaining but now forecasted as 0:15. About as accurate as the 7-day weather forecast. - Tom Sheppard

18:59 > Oops! Forgot to tell Time Machine on the server to not backup that 63 GB Retrospect file of non-critical MacBook files, so TM failed. Turned it off for now. Will turn it back on when I delete the temporary Retrospect file. - Tom Sheppard

19:09 > How many minutes has it been saying, "About a minute"? - Tom Sheppard

19:14 > Install completed, requesting Restart. Boy, that was a long minute. - Tom Sheppard

19:15 > The installer originally said 1:35 but really took 0:30. It's better to be conservative, I guess. Restart completed. Waiting for me to log in. - Tom Sheppard

19:19 > The Conflict Resolver for iCal popped up complaining about 5 sync conflicts. Weird, no calendar changes were made. Probably due to the flaky Plaxo service I'm using to sync multiple Macs. - Tom Sheppard

19:22 > Running Software Update to let Apple decide, not me, what updates to apply. It reports AirPort Utility 5.3.2, Remote Desktop Client Update 3.2.2, AirPort Utility Software Update 5.4.2, QuickTime 7.6.2, iTunes 8.2.0, Mac OS Update Combined 10.5.7. But, I don't like using the OS updater, I prefer to use the Combo updater. Will let it update everything but the OS and will do that manually with the Combo updater. - Tom Sheppard

19:30 > Restarting. - Tom Sheppard

19:33 > Pausing for supper. - Tom Sheppard

20:18 > Back from dinner. Now to install the 10.5.7 combo update. - Tom Sheppard

20:23 > Open a new Finder window so I can click on the server's icon in the Shared tab. Oh, the server doesn't appear, just like I had I started this reinstall. OK, I'll cut Apple some slack since 10.5.7 has to be installed yet (the server is already on 10.5.7). Why is OS X networking so much flakier than OS 9? Mounted the server volume successfully using Finder's Go > Network menu. - Tom Sheppard

20:26 > Installer was forecasting 8 minutes about a minute ago. Not that I believe any time estimates Apple installers give. - Tom Sheppard

20:30 Only took 5 minutes, not 8 to install. Restarting. - Tom Sheppard

20:36 > Adding Previous Systems to Time Machine's Do Not Backup list. Also marking the folder so that Retrospect does not back it up. Now that everything is updated from first Software Update, running a second pass. - Tom Sheppard

20:40 > Software Update wants to update to iLife Support 9.0.3, Front Row Update 2.1.7, Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 2.6, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 1.0, Safari 4.0.1. - Tom Sheppard

20:49 > Third Software Update check shows that everything is fully up to date. So does the server show up in the Finder window side-bar Sharing area now? No. FAIL! Leopard's networking — just — plain — sucks. - Tom Sheppard

20:53 > I see a 10.3.9 laptop, a Win2K PC, and a PC server with my ID of tom. Where is that? It's on the server. Yes, you've got that right. Instead of Leopard showing me the Apple file sharing on the server, it's showing me the PC SMB-type server. This is pathetic no matter which way you look at it. This is why I've been beating the drum about how horrible Leopard's networking is. Well, let's try turning File Sharing off and on to see if that fixes it. - Tom Sheppard

20:58 > Yup, that fixed it. I had to cycle File Sharing on the server. Now it appears properly on the MacBook. But, my wife and daughter's laptops now show up too. So Leopard on my server (not OS X Server) was somehow screwing up the network so that the MacBook couldn't see other computers. [Shakes head in disgust.] - Tom Sheppard

21:01 > The Logitech Control Center can't see my Logitech mouse. Reinstalling the LCC. - Tom Sheppard

21:05 > Had 2.6 installed. Downloaded and installed 2.7. Restarting. Have to remember to reinstall Little Snitch too. - Tom Sheppard

21:09 > The OS has been complaining since the first startup after the OS reinstall that the permissions for Timbuktu Pro (ancient version) and RetroClient needed to be fixed. Letting it do that and need to restart. - Tom Sheppard

21:11 > That fixed RetroClient as Retrospect tried to do a backup. I'm still fixing up odds and ends so I deferred it for an hour. Installed Little Snitch and this requires yet another restart. Don't let anyone try to get you to believe that an OS archive and install is a simple one hour job. It's far from it as this posting attests. - Tom Sheppard

21:16 > Tried to launch Parallels. Won't even launch. Have to reinstall. This is expected as some applications get their fingers into the OS. That's why an OS reinstall is something to be approached with some trepidation and a lot of time on your hands. You do keep track of all your installers and serial numbers, right? - Tom Sheppard

21:18 > Oh great. The MacBook can't see the server again in the side-bar. Stopping File Sharing on the server again (isn't this what you like to do a lot to a file server, turn it off and on several times?) and it reports it will be stopped in less than a minute. That was over a minute ago. - Tom Sheppard

21:20 > Clicked the File Sharing checkbox and it came back online even though it theoretically never went offline. Click again, now it's offline. Click. Back online and MacBook can now see the server and other laptops again. There is clearly something very wrong with Leopard's networking if the MacBook can screw up the server which screws up the MacBook. I'd like to see the design specification for that beauty. - Tom Sheppard

21:32 > Parallels reinstalled successfully. Started up the PC and it's installing new Parallels tools. Now the PC image is restarting. See how simple these OS X archive and installs are? - Tom Sheppard

21:37 > Retrospect wants to back up the PC image, so I'll let that go ahead. - Tom Sheppard

21:43 > Retrospect on the MacBook lost track of the subvolumes for some reason. Have to reset the subvolumes and rebuild the backup scripts. Great fun. - Tom Sheppard

21:45 > I think Retrospect keeps some of its prefs in /Library/Preferences. These are lost on an archive and install. I wonder what else I'll find missing. - Tom Sheppard

21:49 > Mail seems to be OK. iTunes complains that it can't connect to my iPod Touch because it's locked with a passcode. I click Try Again and it works. - Tom Sheppard

21:53 > iPod Touch and 2G Shuffle sync OK, best I can tell. - Tom Sheppard

22:15 > I think I'm going to wrap it up for the evening. I'll have to watch for missing bits and pieces as I use my apps over time. - Tom Sheppard

~ Day 2 10:50 > Some nagging problems so far. NetAuthAgent nags before mounting volumes; Mails asks to use keychain.An OS X archive & install has left some nagging problems so far. NetAuthAgent nags before mounting volumes; Mails asks to use keychain. - Tom Sheppard

~ D2 11:50 > In the course of restarting file sharing on server, Leopard took it upon itself to disable FTP and SMB sharing and not restoring. Bad kitty. - Tom Sheppard

D2 15:55 > Dreamweaver reports it requires a reinstallation. Not unexpected with some apps. - Tom Sheppard

D2 15:58 > Dreamweaver needs to be uninstalled first as the updater fails. Cute. - Tom Sheppard