[X4U] Disk Utility on Panther and Tiger

[Wayne Clodfelter]

On Oct 11, 2005, at 1:48 AM, David Ledger wrote:

>> From: Wayne Clodfelter <wayne at troutnc.com>
>>
>> I have a Panther boot volume and a Tiger boot volume.
>> I started up in Panther and was going to open Disk Utility to verify
>> the Tiger disk.
>> Oops! What if DU on Panther is not compatible with Tiger?
>> It probably isn't--though I have not seen a statement to that effect
>> anywhere.
>>
>> Two thoughts here.
>> ONE, Disk Utility under a superseded version of OS X should not even
>> be able to verify/repair a system disk of a later release unless it
>> is compatible. Does anyone know if it attempts the verify/repair of
>> if it balks when such a run is attempted?
>>
>> TWO, it should be possible for the latest version of Disk Utility to
>> be installed/copied over to boot volumes containing earlier OS X
>> releases.
>> Has anyone done this and achieved a working application? How did you
>> achieve the install/copy?
>> Of course, this raises the question whether the latest release of
>> Disk Utility is always backwards compatible with earlier OS X
>> incarnations. Is this true or not?

I have a few problems with what you have written.
>>
>
> ONE.  Filesystem repair utilities look at filesystems; that is they  
> see a partition as an array of bytes that must conform to some rules.
So, if the "rules" are different between Panther and Tiger, DU will  
do what? Recognize that the file system IS different and do nothing,  
or try to bend the file system to ITS rules?
> They do not look at files. Examining files needs a whole section of  
> the OS to support it, and that may not be available. When disc  
> utilities start looking at the contents of a disc and then deciding  
> that the data indicates that it shouldn't repair it, we've lost  
> something - even if it would protect you from Norton.
I don't know what this is all about. I didn't mention file repair.

> If the filesystem it's pointed at is incompatible it will notice;  
> if it's just created by newer software it may not notice, or be  
> written to ignore the fact.
Which is it? Will it notice or not? You can't say it will notice if  
it is incompatible but it won't notice if the incompatibility is  
caused by being newer than the file system it is analyzing.
>
> TWO.  From what others have said here you can use later versions of  
> Disk Utility  to repair discs created by older systems, but I don't  
> know how far back that goes. 10.3 Disk Utility worked with my OS9  
> partition on my G4. That partition was loaded while booted from the  
> OS9 install CD. Havn't repaired that partition since I put Tiger on  
> it last weekend (at last - using FireWire disk mode from my PB). If  
> a newer utility runs on an older OS it means that the library calls  
> have all resolved and so it should be fine.
So if DU from Tiger will run while booted from Panther, it means that  
the library calls have all been resolved and so it should be fine? I  
don't think so.
I believe that DU on a Tiger boot volume will run while booted in  
Panther, but it cannot be used to verify/repair the same Tiger volume  
because that volume contains a running app, which is DU, itself.
>
> David
>
>
> -- 
> David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
> Chair of HPUX SysAdmin SIG of hpUG technical user group  
> (www.hpug.org.uk)
> david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
> www.ivdcs.co.uk
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Regards,

Wayne Clodfelter
wayne at troutnc.com