My migration to Intel
The migration happened about two weeks ago. It took a little over 2 hours to get everything transferred over (in the order of about 51GB transferred over Firewire). Things that needed to get sorted out:
- A few tools needed upgarding: SMARTReporter, coconutBattery, VLC (which seems to lack a Universal Binary)
- Upgrade Tunnelblick to a new version. Realize that the old configuration that said “openvpn” would work in getting me back to the network.
- Reinstalled XCode.
- Found it rather silly that all the software I had (say, iTunes that was a universal binary on PowerPC) didn’t actually get transferred over, so I had to run Software Update all over again.
- X11 was missing, so that needed reinstalling too. So did the X11 SDK. Basically anything that came out of XCode, faced this problem.
- SSHKeychain has no Universal Binary and it looks like there isn’t going to be one anytime soon. Good news is that the source is available, so maybe I’ll do something about it when time permits.
- The built-in iSight didn’t actually “work” after transferring all my details over. It worked after the first reboot and new software though.
- GizmoProject of late has been misbehaving on OS X. It would normally refuse to start, but worked fine on my Nokia 770. The upgrade to Intel made things just magically work. I wonder if they’ve broken backward compatibility?
- There’s a new version of X-Lite, however its still PowerPC based. It also zapped my configuration, so beware.
- My saved passwords in Safari never really got transferred over. It was transferred over via the Keychain, but I seem to have to enter everything manually again. What a pain.
- All my MacPorts are PowerPC based. This proved to be a little irritating. The best way to migrate it seemed was to remove all of MacPorts itself (read the FAQ) by doing sudo
rm -rf /opt/local /Applications/DarwinPorts /Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 /Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup. Then begins the arduous task of reinstalling everything. List on the old installation, “sudo port list installed > ports” and then install it via the ports file. Surprisingly impressed at the speed at which things were built. - Another EFI updated bringing it up to 1.2. I preferred the OpenFirmware way of getting things done; EFI itself seems rather limited.
- BitKeeper disappeared. Some might argue that its a good thing, so I got the OS X/Intel build without drama.
- Apple Remote Desktop 2.2, something I (along with a lot of WWDC attendees) received a few years back doesn’t run on Intel. It complains its looking for an update, yet there isn’t one available. Guess I’ll have to move back to using VNC.
Adobe Photoshop is idiotic. Its as daft as Windows XP. I’ve reached my maximum activations (what’s that, 2? – mind you I already tolerate the you can only have one copy of this application open on the network at any given time). Its a good thing I didn’t zap the Powerbook entirely to install Linux on it, and have it just sleeping so I can comply with Adobe thinking that I may be a pirate. Its stupidity like this that I think I should only use open source software and if it wasn’t helpful, pirate software.
All in all, this was a large usage in bandwidth. The migration wasn’t as seamless as I thought it would be. It ate up a good portion of a day… And now, I can’t sit with my legs propped up on the desk with the laptop on my lap – it burns my skin :-(
Update: I think that in the very near future, I’ll probably have to find it in my strapped pocketbook to buy a Macbook for Mac-related work. They’re 64-bit now, and have everything the Macbook Pro’s have, minus the ExpressCard slot (which I can do without). Looks like 2007 is the year of buying laptops… sigh. At which point I’ll be able to blog about a “MacIntel to MacIntel migration”.
Your Safari Keychain will start working again if you open the keychain file in Keychain Access and set it to default. I had to do that.
Let me know if you want the Intel binary of SSHKeyChain I’m using.
I just blew my MBP away and reinstalled from scratch last weekend. All I did was rsync off to a FW disk beforehand, and pull bits back as I needed them (same as I did when I moved from PPC to Intel, or from PPC to newer PPC before that, etc.). I used the migration assistant once (when I was migrating to a new machine in a hurry), but really, moving to a new (or reinstalled) machine is a chance to leave a lot of rubbish behind…
There are 3rd-party-built Intel binaries for SSHkeychain just a google away.
I couldn’t find one for Netgrowler (handy if you haven’t tried it), but that’s easily recompiled from source.
A bandwidth saver for MacPorts might be to rsync $your_macports_root/var/db/dports/distfiles from the old machine – I didn’t bother ’cause I figured I’d try and restrain myself anyway.
Having shelled out a questionable amount of money for a .mac account sorta helped, too – stuff like the keychain and mail settings and addressbook and yojimbo data came straight over.
Hi,
Bad news: my MacBook Core 2 Duo runs far too hot to sit on my lap. The form and weight is perfect, pity about the heat output!
Daniel