Snow Leopard upgrade notes

Words of warning for anyone who's customized "under the hood" a little:

1. The Snow Leopard installer (doing an upgrade) wipes out /var/log/.
   

   Not only would I have preferred to keep the old logs (historical reference; maybe to compare pre- and post- Snow Leopard), but I also had some custom stuff logging into there (ex: freshclam) that was just gone. And my code was quick-and-dirty so it didn't recover gracefully (ex: to the logs not existing) so I had to do a bit of cleanup.
   

   No huge deal (this is not-unexpected behavior for /var/) though it is new behavior for the Installer, so I'm adding this to the great Internet KnowledgeBase, so maybe it saves someone else a bit of effort. :)
   

2. It seems to have wiped out the /opt/local/mysql symlink to /opt/local/mysql-version_spec; also easily fixed.
   
   
3. MacPorts wouldn't selfupdate for me, so I just reinstalled from the latest disk image (1.8.0 for 10.6). I also installed the new Snow Leopard Xcode Tools (3.2; newer even than the version I downloaded last week!) on the Snow Leopard DVD.

BTW: If you have done some customizing, look for files with these strings added to the name (not just appended): "~previous", "~orig", or (maybe) "disabled". Such as:

• /etc/syslog.conf~previous
• /etc/postfix/main.cf~orig

As you may need to bring some customizations back. (Though in both the above cases, I was happy with the way the Installer had done it.)

(Thanks to Apple for putting some nice info in various logs.)

Otherwise, smooth sailing! Definitely a must-have upgrade, especially considering the price and what it sets up for the near future.

Macs are more secure

Check out the Macalope's column "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" in which he discusses yet another (strange) survey trumpeting trouble for Apple.

He also discusses Apple trumpeting about Macs being more secure, and makes a good analogy to be somewhat more realistic: "no matter how nice the neighborhood, you can only leave your houses unlocked for so long before something bad happens".

Clearly, no matter how secure Macs are to start, if you make insecure choices (ex: easy password, auto-login, etc.) you may find yourself in trouble.

The comments below the article are worth reading too; and indeed security does include many things.

One factor is the default config. In MS Windows, virtually everything defaults to "on" whereas the Mac defaults to "off"; you can't be attacked via a door that isn't there.

Another factor is monoculture vs. diversity; much malware depends on the targets running IE or Outlook or whatever - whereas the Mac market benefits from a different and more varied environment and so is more difficult to target.

Macs are certainly not immune (nothing is) - however they do suffer from far less malware and one reason is that they start out more secure than MS Windows. The rest is up to you.

Pruning Time Machine Backups

Here's an interesting twist; Apple seems to be protecting me from myself again:

I noticed that Time Machine (TM) is backing up the Thumb64Segment.data (etc) files in my iPhoto bundle/folder and since those files are large and easily replaced, I want to skip them; easily added to the exception list ("Do not back up", via the "Options" button in the Time Machine preference pane) for future backups - HOWEVER I can't figure out how to prune them from previous TM backups.

(Tip: If you don't already use Eriban's Grand Perspective, check it out - it's terrific for exploring just where your disk space is spent, and it properly counts the hard links that TM makes such heavy use of. BTW: I also recommended Robert Pointon's tms, a command line utility to get lots of great info on your TM backups, including what exactly was backed up each time.)

Now, back to the problem that software exposed:

Of course I can open the iPhoto bundle in a Finder window, but as soon as I "Enter Time Machine", the window changes and moves to its parent. If I first open a Finder window to a subfolder within the bundle, that does stay viewed in Time Machine, but as soon as I click on the Thumb64Segment.data file to "Delete all Backups..." of it, the window immediately moves up another level.

Apparently Apple wants to prevent me from messing with bundles. I do understand the reasoning, however I'd argue the protections in the Finder are enough; if I've explicitly chosen to navigate into a bundle (hard to do by mistake) then let me work there! :)

So, there appears to be no GUI way to prune TM backups of bundles in this way; does anyone know how to prune by command line, within Time Machine? Of course it's easy enough to simply find and delete files via command line, however I don't know if that's safe within a Time Machine backup - anyone?