Ask Different (Apple)

Yosemite upgrade process stuck for hours - Cmd-L not working

Today I started the upgrade of my Mid 2011 iMac 27 from Mavericks to Yosemite. Initially it got stuck at the end of the first part of the installation. I could however pull up the installation log using Command-L and so I could tell it was still doing something. Eventually it completed and rebooted. It then got into the Completing Installation phase with a similar progress screen. It's been at "Less than a minute remaining" for the past 4 hours and no sign of activity. I also can't pull up the installation log by pressing Command-L. I just hear the familiar error sound when I try that.

I do use Homebrew so there's probably a lot of stuff in /usr/local causing the installation to take a long time, but I figured that's what caused part 1 of the installation to take so long, but it doesn't explain why part 2 is taking even longer.

Mavericks was installed on an external SSD (Lacie Rugged series) connected through thunderbolt. I now read that some people are experiencing problems with 3rd party SSD drives in Yosemite (yeah, I know I should have checked that before starting the upgrade, but who would have known?).

I'm not sure what to do now: just power off the computer and see if it continues finalizing the installation process after I restart it? Or just wait until tomorrow morning and see if it's still stuck? Even though I have a time machine backup on an external drive I don't want to risk losing my data forcing me to do a restore. Any advice?

Correcting GPS data using Photos

Really simple question: Is there a way to fix incorrect GPS data? A recent trip lead to a bunch of pictures taken in the same place getting sometimes wildly wrong coordinates appended to them (probably because the photos were taken indoors).

Restore on new drive: Time Machine versus "Restore" via Disk Utility

I am about to install a new 240GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G (6Gb/s) SSD into the main drive bay of my MacBook Pro, moving the original Apple-installed 120GB 3G (3Gb/s) SSD into the optical bay using an OWC "Data Doubler."

I have my entire Mac OS X install and all data (that is the entire contents of the original SSD) backed up to an external Time Machine backup drive.

I'll want to make the new SSD in the main bay my bootable drive. Question is, what are the differences between these two restore strategies:

Restore from Time Machine

"Restore" via Disk Utility, using my original SSD (in the optical bay) as the "Source" and the new SSD (in the main bay) as the "Destination"

Are there any fundamental difference between these two approaches? Such as:

Is one faster than the other?

Does one involve more or less risk in some settings or such being "lost in translation" and needing to be reset?

Would both methods of restore include a recovery partition on the new SSD?

MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011, Macbook8,3) | 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 | Yosemite 10.10.2

caffeinate with launchd Doesn't Work when I Close My Laptop's Lid

I have a launchd task that periodically initiates a time machine network backup. I've had problems with corrupted sparse bundle disk images, which I've assumed is due to the either the computer sleeping during a backup, the NAS sleeping while the sparse bundle is mounted, or some combination of the 2. So, in order to fix this I run caffeinate with launchd task and have caffeinate run my script. I found, however, that the computer still goes to sleep when I close the lid, even when AC power is connected. I did a simple test, and found that caffeinate works as expected when I use it in a terminal, and does keep my computer awake, however, in that same test initiated with launchd/caffeinate the computer still goes to sleep while the script is running.

I'm running caffeinate with the -ims flags. In my simple test I used the following script:


#!/bin/sh

while true; do
    date | logger
    sleep 1
done

I monitor the system log with:


tail -f /var/log/system.log

I'm using OS X 10.9.5.

i want to stop iMessages from being deleted

I want to prevent my step daughter deleting message from iMessages so they can't be viewed (once you delete that using the more button you can't see it again)

Is there a way to prevent that (disable that function)?

Can I write a script to take an action right before the computer is going to go to sleep?

I think my computer is randomly not syncing email correctly with Apple Mail, but it's only a problem when it wakes from sleep.

That issue is neither here nor there. What I'd like to do is write a script / something that will quit Apple Mail if it detects that the computer is going to sleep.

Ideally, there'd be a similar process to open Apple Mail upon waking from sleep, but that's less of an issue.

I tried looking for a system event library of some kind, but all I can find is fsevents (which I don't think has anything about sleep).

Thanks!

Pros and cons to JBOD setup on MacBook Pro with two internal SSDs

I've got an original Apple-installed 120GB 3G (3Gb/s) SSD which I'll be moving into the optical bay using an OWC "Data Doubler" and swapping a new 240GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G (6Gb/s) SSD into the main drive bay.

My goal is to avoid having two separate volumes.

Understand that a RAID 0 array would essentially only perform as well as the slowest drive in the array (the 3G SSD in this case), if it would even work at all given the two drives are not identical in make and capacity.

I've read that a JBOD array isn't subject to the "same make and capacity" constraints. But how does this setup perform?

Would the speed of the 6G be hobbled, slowed down to the 3G's speed (or worse?), if I were to set up the two SSDs as a JBOD array?