Another system update to 10.7.4

[mosslack]

This latest update proved a little more difficult for my Asus 1201N. Although the update from software update went fine, but the system refused to boot afterwards. The verbose boot revealed the Still waiting for root device error after the update. Having seen this error many times before, I figured it was just a matter of rolling a certain kext back to a previous version to get around it.

The first one I tried was found at OSx86.net and involved rolling the AppleFileSystemDriver.kext, but didn't help anything. So another suggestion was to roll back the IOStorageFamily.kext back, which I did. This in fact worked and the system booted into 10.7.4. I was reminded of my similar problem when I setup my P4server on SL, I basically had to roll that one back to a Tiger version!

Of course sound was no longer working and I just re-installed the two audio kexts used when I originally installed Lion on this system. That fixed sound and now everything seems to be working just fine.

This of course was done on my backup partition, but I don't plan to do my primary partition until after I get back from my upcoming trip. I want to be sure it's working okay during the trip and knowing that the update breaks the booting, I need to do it in a way that I know it will work. This will probably require booting via a USB flash drive and it can be very difficult to do that on this particular system.

Just a message from mosslack...

______________________________

GG <+> TBIE <+> Hack List <+> Alt-OS

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> So another
> suggestion was to roll back the IOStorageFamily.kext back, which I did.
> This in fact worked and the system booted into 10.7.4. I was reminded of
> my similar problem when I setup my P4server on SL, I basically had to roll
> that one back to a Tiger version!

This probably implicates the 10.7.1 atom kernel.

But, as it was successfully used on 10.7, 10.7.1, 10.7.2 and 10.7.3, I'd
guess there will be no great effort to update the kernel for 10.7.4
compatibility, just the solution to "rollback" the kext.

As this solution worked on your 1201n, I'm going to try it on my
Supermicro Atom 330 server (same proc as the 1201n, but the rest of the
machine has no similarity to the 1201n at all).

I'm due to receive those two 2.5" "hybrid" 7200 rpm drives (4 GB of cache)
on Wednesday, for use in a RAIDed system on the Supermicro. I already have
the bracket.

I'll very likely do the 10.7.4 update before installing the RAIDed drives.

[mosslack]

Well, you can definitely do the update on a backup partition as long as it's not the primary partition. That seems to go well. I would have done it on a USB drive but the 1201N doesn't do well with that as you probably know. If I can find the EBD that I made way back when, I can use that to fix the kext so it will boot and reinstall the boot loader if necessary. I believe you have access to your hard drive so using a USB dock to do the rollback should be an easier process. 

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> Well, you can definitely do the update on a backup partition as long as
> it's not the primary partition. That seems to go well. I would have done
> it on a USB drive but the 1201N doesn't do well with that as you probably
> know. If I can find the EBD that I made way back when, I can use that to
> fix the kext so it will boot and reinstall the boot loader if necessary. I
> believe you have access to your hard drive so using a USB dock to do the
> rollback should be an easier process.

Unlike the last time, this time I WILL be updating the backup partition on
3.5" HD.

My external dock is both USB 2.0 AND eSATA, so if disaster happens, I can
always boot just as I was before, only with the same HD in the external
dock.

[faithie999]

Doug--thanks for discovering the fix for 10.7.4 with the atom processor.

i tested the rollback of the IOStorageFamily.kext on a cloned drive, and after seeing that it worked, i updated my main HD and then rolled back the kext using the 10.7.3 version.  it started up like a charm.

good job!

ken

[faithie999]

i failed to mention in the above message that the Atom in question is in my Supermicro server.

ken