Very slow 10.5.8 updates on some PPC machines

It's been over a month, so I figured I might as well install 10.5.8. Since my photo work now lives on the Intel MacBook, I did the update first on my G5 iMac.

As usual I did a safe boot first to clear out caches and the like. I disconnected my firewire drive then I rebooted. I installed from the Combo Update. I didn't "repair permissions" because, as near as I can tell, that's bogus.

The install proceeded normally until it got to the "2 minute" mark. Then the update appeared to hang. The progress bar was frozen, displaying "Install time remaining: About 2 minutes".

Ok. This is Apple after all. We have to expect things not to work properly. I was only mildly suprised.

Happily, I found a most useful reference while I waited ...

...Apple - Support - Discussions - OS 10.5.8 update failure ...

I'm getting the same thing where the installer is stuck at 2 mins.

BUT.

I know it's doing something.

If you bring up the installer log by going Command - L ... and then select 'Show Errors Only' and change it to 'Show All Logs' you'll see it's writing some metadata into the Receipts folder....

Great tip, I didn't know about the installer log. I'm also seeing leisurely, updates to Receipts folder metadata. (Quite a few entries in the error list too!)

Another response speculates that there's some "code signing" going on. Some PPC updates are said to take hours to complete.

Update pending.

Update: It concluded properly. Here are the final log results ...

Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: **** Summary Information ****
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: Operation Elapsed time
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: -----------------------------
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: script 2441.19 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: zero 0.36 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: install 2992.16 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: validate 32.83 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: os 0.00 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: extract 464.22 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: receipt 4.49 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: disk 1.08 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: config 49.33 seconds

It took about 90 minutes to complete the update, most of which was spent on those very slow metadata writes.

Here are the results for an Intel MacBook:

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: **** Summary Information ****

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: Operation Elapsed time

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: -----------------------------

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: script 381.73 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: zero 0.08 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: install 744.83 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: validate 17.36 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: os 0.00 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: extract 311.78 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: receipt 0.91 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: disk 1.01 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: config 33.04 seconds

On the Intel machine the install took about 20 minutes -- so about 1/4 to 1/5 the time.

Update b: I went to do a scan and my Epson Scan software died. I don't know if this was the update, but I'm suspicious. Epson put out a new version a few days ago that's supposed to cover 10.6 too:

Scanner Driver and EPSON Scan Utility v3.28
Intel-based Macs with OS X (v10.4.4 - v10.6.x), PowerPC Macs with OS X (v10.3.9 - v10.5.x)
epson13224.dmg - 18.6MB - posted on 09/01/09

The installation didn't change my problem, but it resolved away after a reboot. I suspect it was unrelated to the update; I've not used the scanner for a bit.

The new Epson scan utility does cure a few old bugs however.