[OS X TeX] OT: 10.5.7 issues?

[Michael Sharpe]

On May 19, 2009, at 2:47 PM, Juergen Fenn wrote:

> Searching the web for 10.5.7 issues makes me wonder whether I should
> upgrade at all. Apple discussions are full of reports and queries by
> disappointed users trying to get their system running as before again.
> Seems much worse than ever before since I switched to the Mac.
> Particularly, users complain about an issue with X11 forcing them to
> upgrade to the latest xquartz from sourceforge.
>
> Opinions?

Upgrading to 10.5.7 went smoothly on a newish Macbook Pro. I had  
problems upgrading an older Mac Pro---the upgrade caused the system to  
become unbootable, going into a tight restart loop ("syncing disks--- 
killing all processes"). I had a bootable external backup, and  
replaced the old system disk with a brand new disk, cloned the  
external drive to the new disk, and reran the upgrade, which went  
without incident this time. (After pulling the old drive, I noticed  
that it was in fact a Seagate 7200.9, but had been identified by Disk  
Utility as a Fujitsu.)

Despite my displeasure at having to spend a few hours of maintenance,  
I think upgrade is worthwhile provided you have a bootable backup  
available. The new system is somewhat faster than 10.5.6. For example,  
making a TeX format, which formerly required 2 to 2.5 seconds if the  
files were not in the cache, now takes under a second, under (roughly)  
the same conditions. (I don't know if disk fragmentation is a factor  
here.)

Michael