Upgrading to Snow Leopard adventures

By Evert on 2009-09-15 19:41:51

I just got my copy of snow leopard in the mail, so I decided to upgrade my laptop. After doing a full backup, I didn't turn out to be as easy as I thought.

The installation process quickly showed a little yellow triangle, indicating I didn't have any startup disks. I quickly remembered I had a dual boot to Ubuntu, and used Refit, which is basically an alternative boot menu, to get into Linux and the likes.

So I looked up the removal instructions, but unfortunately this didn't change the situation. I then read that OS/X will restore the standard EFI loader (if that's the correct terminology), by opening the Disk Utility, and making the partition slightly smaller and bigger again. Trying this I got an odd error, namely "MediaKit reports no such partition". No dice.

So I ended up booting an Ubuntu Live CD, removing the linux ext3 and swap partitions there. After this was done, I was able to resize the main OS/X partition, which eventually fixed the problem.

If you ran into similar problems, I'm hoping there's enough keywords in here for you to find this solution :).

After all that installing Snow Leopard is a bit of an anti-climax. As advertised, not a lot changed, and I've yet to see a noticeable speed difference. The OS is using less disk-space, but 29 euro is still a high price for a glorified 'rm' statement.

I do notice small notification improvements here and there, and Address Book.app now supports CardDAV, which is nice.

Digg Upgrading to Snow Leopard adventures

Comments

SouthWind47 said on Tuesday, 13 October 2009 at 11:19 am CEST

I looked at the cards and at the first glimpse my impression was: a reflecting pool, or mirror perhaps. ,

Daniel said on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 8:50 pm CEST

Good advice.

From what I've heard, the graphic card will make a lot of difference now.

I've just ordered my copy of Snow Leapard, so I'll know more soon :)

Oleg said on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 9:19 pm CEST

Yeah, I had my portions of shenanigans upgrading to Snow Leopard.
The os installed fine, I don't have a dual boot, but upgrading software was a pain, especially Ruby, Rails, mysql drivers for Rails and such.
I think after 48 hours I finally upgraded two laptops and everything works now.

I did notice that Mail.app and Safari work faster.

And the 29 ueros — well, have you noticed the new wallpapers?
They are totally worth it ;)))

Evert said on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 9:47 pm CEST

I just checked the wallpapers, I take back everything I said!

Chris said on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 9:54 pm CEST

Just use it a while, there a few hidden gems which will become handy soon :-) - and they're shipping php 5.3!

Artur Ejsmont said on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 9:54 pm CEST

Yes i stumbled upon php5.3 as well.

Im not a mac fan at all .... and imho its not worth the money .... ubuntu rocks. I even prefer windows!

:- )

Fred Fredson said on Thursday, 17 December 2009 at 4:25 pm CET

I hear quicktime has had a major downgrade in snow leopard, is this true? It prevents me from upgrading.

't Bijstere spoor

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