tiger running SO SLOW on G4 powebook

yeah i would say it's the fonts now. it may have just been fluke that they didn't mess panther up... what you can do, as a temporary measure, is find the fonts you absolutely need, check them for any specific faults, then add them to the system>library>fonts folder. this will let it show in Safe Boot, but do this carefully, and you may need to use the root user to authenticate this. do a search for 'enabling root' to find out more about how to do this part.
 
Okay, well i restarted in normal mode and things seemed much better. But then it started doing the same things--slowing way down. pick 2 items and hit "move to trash"? 23 seconds.

So i started to deal with the fonts. the first thing I did was open Font Book and verify the fonts. Out of all those fonts, 9 had problems. I sorted by "errors" checked all 9, hit "delete checked files." They deleted, and then the window closed, and then font book got the SWOD and i realized that my fonts were being transfered, 1 by 1, to the trash. I couldn't do anything anyway, so i let it go. After it got down to 0 fonts, I was able to access the Fontbook menu, but undo was greyed out. Then, again without me doing anything, they all started to transfer back in. Fontbook and the trash played this game of tug-o-war THREE TIMES and finally ended with all the fonts in the trash.

this is getting ugly. Now, before i can do anything else, i need to figure out how to get my fonts back. Obviously i took them out of the trash. And I tried sticking them back into Fontbook, (after a logout/restart) but it did not notice them. I spent many an hour setting up my collections and they are all empty now...

So, does anyone know 1) if I re-import all the fonts back into fontbook, will it still recognize the collections (this seems a little strange, to import the fonts so i can disable them, but i really would like to preserve the collection info)

or 2)which folders do i need to copy from my backup in order to preserve that information? Clearly, just copying the fonts isn't going to do it. And my Fontbook collection files are still all there and unmodified...?
 
Also, when it started slowing down again, I was getting the same console errors:
"Jan 19 13:08:00 titanium System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/MacOS/SystemUIServer: The function CGSSetGStateAttribute is obsolete and will be removed in a Tiger update. Unfortunately, this app, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance."

There is a whole list of functions with the same message, including:
CGSReadObjectFromCString
CGSCreateDictionary
CGSDictionary
CGSDictionarySetObjectForKey
CGSSetGStateAttribute
CGSGetElementForCStringKey
CGSDictionaryObjectForKey

Anybody know what they are?
I'm sorry i am having such trouble, I usually am able to maintain my own system, but I am not a unix person and don't really know what is going on anymore.
thanks jennie
 
I have a G4 Mac Mini 1.25Ghz with 512MB of RAM, Radeon 9200 32MB Video

I'm gonna guess that your system is comparable to mine. I've been running Tiger for over 6 months now. At first I thought it was MUCH slower than Panther, but now I'd have to say it runs half decent.

Here is some of the things I've done:
* Install ShadowKiller, put it as a Startup Item
(http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shadowkiller)
* Disable all your dashboard widgets (they run in bg; slows you down)
* If you don't use it, ensure you remove your .Mac info from System Prefs
* Use a solid-color background

Most of these are no-brainers but together you get quite a noticeable difference. Hope this helps!
 
CGS stands for Core Graphics Services, and the SystemUIserver is what draws all the graphics on screen. these are very fundamental, and they're going badly wrong.

i think it's now time to accept fate, and allocate some time to a clean install. it doesn't need to be as painful as you think, although you will need an external hardrive, but these can be as little as £40 now.

first, copy your entire home folder to the harddrive. this is in [Macintosh HD]/Users/ , and you want to copy the entire folder with your name on it to your new harddrive. in another folder, back up anything else you might want. this may take less than an hour. once you're sure you have everything, double check.

now clean install Tiger. this can be found in the installation when an options button appears on the left, about halfway through the wizard.

once your back on top, open /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager. click on 'Users', in the main window, and then your name. where it says 'home' at the bottom, change the path to the exact path of your backed up home folder, which will be /Volumes/[external HDD name]/[your old home folder name].

do a quick log-out and log-in to make sure it's worked properly, and that everything's working fine. if it is, copy your backed-up home folder back to it's original location, making sure it's in the exact same place it started out. now using NetInfo Manager again, point your home folder location back to it's original location, and log out/log in.

done. do a permission repair, then restart for good effect.
 
I second Major Burns' suggestion, there's obviously something seriously corrupted in the low-level system processes; something that, even if able to be fixed, doesn't bode well for the over-all health of the OS.

I should mention that when you set up your account under the new install, make sure you use exactly the same short and long usernames. It is possible to change them, and I have done this in the past, but you have to jump through some nasty hoops with permissions to get everything re-associated with your account. Much easier to simply keep them the same :)
 
So you are saying that the clean install that i did...didn't take? Or that the migration assistant migrated things over poorly? I guess i don't get how me, manually copying stuff over, as opposed to using the migration assistant, is going to change anything? I am still going to need to copy over the apps, app prefs, fonts, etc. I don't have all that stuff at hand to reinstall from disks.

I have a full bootable backup of the whole panther system on one drive, and a full backup in a sparse volume of the first tiger install (before the clean install) on a second drive (both external). What I will probably do is just overwrite the tiger backup with the current one, which will preserve my user files and all my new work. but, I was hoping to fix the font problem first. Or, i can exclude those folders (i use superduper) but which tricky folders (besides fonts, disabled fonts, font collections) do i need to exclude?

Okay, so I will have a full backup. then I do a clean install again. do i need to wipe the drive or anything first? And then, with this clean install, instead of using the migration assistant, i am going to manually copy over my user folder...and the applications folder, since they are not in my user folder. Aren't there prefs and mysterious other unix-y files that i am going to miss? Would those just be Application Support, and Preferences?

i guess...i thought that was what the migration did. it sounds like a lot of work, to do the same thing over again.

Can i ask, is tiger just going to be slow for me, like Yesurbius said? am I really going to have to turn off widgits and shadows and constantly worry? Before i do all this, do you guys think with my machine, i should just go back to panther?
 
You'll want to completely clean the hard drive before you install, yes. Including a reformat. The 'unix-y' files are probably the source of your problems, and any that are necessary will be automatically recreated. Don't worry about them. You should be able to copy over your entire user folder verbatim, along with the Applications folder. I doubt there is a problem with anything in either of these places since a new user account didn't help.
I would suggest that you go ahead and put a completely fresh copy of the OS on your computer, then test the clean system for a little while before you copy anything back over, to see if there are any issues. Come back and let us know the results.
 
I must apologize jennie333, it was late - I didn't see that there was more than 1 page to this thread LOL

I agree that you will definately have to do a clean reinstall of Tiger. When I first did an upgrade to Tiger from Panther, my system was near unusable. I did the format and reinstall and its been quite fast. I have to do the optimizations that I mentioned in order to get that little extra bit of performance. The 32MB of Graphics Memory is killer if you've got things consuming it (ie. shadows, bg, etc). The 4200 RPM hard drive on the Mac Mini G4 does me in as far as having multiple programs accessing the drive simultaneously - it brings my system to a crawl. Lastly - the system memory is one of the biggest things that can affect performance on a G4 system. More memory is always a wonderful thing.

I purchased my system as a way to 'learn' mac ... its no wonder I'm pricing out a Mac Pro right now :p
 
dlloyd said:
Flying Meat, 10 GB is an average virtual memory size for OS X. Yours would be about right for OS 9, but I've never seen anything that small on any system running X.
As to the number of fonts fonts Jennie has, that's about forty times more than I personally have on my system, and fonts are known to cause issues on OS X, especially if something becomes corrupted. Along with the suggestions from others to disable fonts and test the result, I'd also suggest clearing the font caches. This free application ought to assist with that: http://homepage.mac.com/jpietry/apps/fontnuke/
Click to expand...

Code: 
my-computer:~ me$ sudo ls -alh /var/vm/
total 4718592
drwxr-xr-x    7 root  wheel        238B Jan 14 22:29 .
drwxr-xr-x   23 root  wheel        782B Jan 13 13:41 ..
drwx--x--x   16 root  wheel        544B Dec 10 13:42 app_profile
-rw------T    1 root  wheel          2G Jan 20 18:59 sleepimage
-rw------T    1 root  wheel         64M Jan 13 13:41 swapfile0
-rw------T    1 root  wheel         64M Jan 14 19:29 swapfile1
-rw------T    1 root  wheel        128M Jan 14 22:29 swapfile2
my-computer:~ me$ 
my-computer:~ me$ uptime
20:25  up 7 days,  6:44, 3 users, load averages: 0.05 0.10 0.18
my-computer:~ me$ 
my-computer:~ me$ uname -a
Darwin my-computer.local 8.8.2 Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.2: Thu Sep 28 20:43:26 PDT 2006; root:xnu-792.14.14.obj~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386
 
Flying Meat said:
Code: 
my-computer:~ me$ sudo ls -alh /var/vm/
total 4718592
drwxr-xr-x    7 root  wheel        238B Jan 14 22:29 .
drwxr-xr-x   23 root  wheel        782B Jan 13 13:41 ..
drwx--x--x   16 root  wheel        544B Dec 10 13:42 app_profile
-rw------T    1 root  wheel          2G Jan 20 18:59 sleepimage
-rw------T    1 root  wheel         64M Jan 13 13:41 swapfile0
-rw------T    1 root  wheel         64M Jan 14 19:29 swapfile1
-rw------T    1 root  wheel        128M Jan 14 22:29 swapfile2
my-computer:~ me$ 
my-computer:~ me$ uptime
20:25  up 7 days,  6:44, 3 users, load averages: 0.05 0.10 0.18
my-computer:~ me$ 
my-computer:~ me$ uname -a
Darwin my-computer.local 8.8.2 Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.2: Thu Sep 28 20:43:26 PDT 2006; root:xnu-792.14.14.obj~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386
Click to expand...

I think we're talking about two different things here then. I meant, and I assume the original poster is indicating this also, the 'VM Size' number from the Activity Viewer application, which as I understand it is the total amount of RAM that in theory could be requested by all currently running processes. In reality nothing ever actually needs all of this memory, which is why the swap files physically on the disk (and this is the information you are referring to) are nowhere near that big. A far more informative piece of information would be the number of Page ins/outs, as this number is the representation of how often data must be loaded from the disk to RAM an vice versa.
 
Agreed. Page-ins/Page-outs is usually the best indicator of efficient operation over time and load.
I'm not sure why Activity Monitor.app reports 10.8GB of VM, when I'm not even in the ballpark of using a gig of swap space (actual virtual memory in use, no?) but adding up all the numbers doesn't result in the 10.8GB listed in Activity Monitor. At least to this math challenged mind.

Code: 
my-computer:~ me$ vm_stat
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                   175134.
Pages active:                 136123.
Pages inactive:               153219.
Pages wired down:              59812.
"Translation faults":      123476064.
Pages copy-on-write:          446707.
Pages zero filled:          85224734.
Pages reactivated:            524772.
Pageins:                      140284.
Pageouts:                       2955.
Object cache: 70632 hits of 3987812 lookups (1% hit rate)

I generally just browse the web, email, play games, test tons of whacky software (mainly freeware) and occasionally develop custom solutions to end-user system configuration issues for work (mostly shell scripting and the requisite installer apps).
With regard to the the custom solutions, half the work is finding out exactly what causes the problem. :p ;)

I guess the VM info that AM is showing, is a calculation of what each app has requested as "possible" VM requirements.
 
okay, all i had time for over the weekend was to fix the font problem by copying over with the backup set, and backing up the new user files (all my work this week!) into the tiger backup.

I am going to make sure I am understanding. Although I did a clean install before, the problem may have been that i used the migration assistant. So, this time, I am going to:

1. reformat the drive. how do i do this--startup from one of my backups, and use disk utility to erase the powerbook?
2. do a clean install of tiger, run the combo updates
3. do NOT migrate my user files
4. test the system--not sure how to do this without apps.
5. change the path of my user files.
6. test that out for a while
7. if the system seems OK, manually, drag over my user folder, and my apps folder. It would be great if i could also drag over my network settings, anyone know where those are?
8. switch the path back

Does that sound about right? if so i will try to do it tonight.
jennie
 
For #1, I'll refer you to step 2.

Once booted up from the installer disk, you should be able to access the Utilities menu and run Disk Utility from there.
_____________________

#5 is confusing me. After a clean install, there should not be a need to change paths.

____________________

#7 has some potential trouble spots in it. Don't drag your user folder and apps folder (unless your apps are exclusive of the already installed OS X apps).
Drag the "contents" of your old user folder "into" their destination (presumably, your newly created user folder). This is generally safer, privileges wise, than replacing your entire user folder.
Try moving as little as possible with regard to prefs and junk. (if you use Apple's Mail.app, then copy /backuppath/username/Library/Mail to /Users/username/Library/ and /backuppath/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist to /Users/username/Library/Preferences/, for instance...)
Hope that's not too confusing.
_______________________

If you skip 5, then you don't have to do 8. :)

Some of your 3rd party apps may need to be reinstalled, or reregistered, since the "/Library/Application Support" folder (and potentially other application specific support directories/files) will no longer contain the support files originally installed.

This is a good thing in most cases, and should be considered a "clean install" step.

Don't forget to do all the updates for the OS, then apps (unless you are aware of specific issues for a given application, of course :p ).
 
No, it's not confusing, thanks.

#5 was a previous suggestion from Lt Major Burns, he was saying that if i changed paths, tested my user stuff out with the clean install, and it was OK, then I could copy it all over and then correct the path...

So for #7, rather than copy the whole folder, copy each folder's contents? This is where the whole not using the migration assistant idea breaks down for me. I do not feel confident that i will get all the files from all the places they need to be retrieved from. And, I am not going to be able to easily find many of the original install disks and serials for some of my most important software. I am pretty disorganized and most of that stuff is years old, and lord knows where it is now. And, the idea of having to figure out and re-do all my preferences in all my apps is horrifying.

Can't i copy the /library/app support stuff over as well? Most of that is in my user folder anyway, for whatever reason...although some of it is in harddrive/library/app support
 
#5 and 8. Ah.

Yeah. Make the backup of /Library/Application Support, and /Library/Preferences as well, if you haven't already.
You may need some of the /Library/Preferences files, but don't restore them en mass. Wait to see what you might need before restoring individual /Library/Preferences files.

I understand the problem of locating original install disks you haven't touched for a couple of years or more. Been there...

For restoring your home folder, it is generally sufficient to copy the folders inside your old home folder into your new home folder. I don't recall if it was said yet, but make sure your new username is the same as your old username. It's usually the same as the home folder name.

P.S. If a path reference starts with "/" then it is an absolute path starting at the main (or "root") level of the boot volume. It's generally accepted common notation. I use it as a guide in my path references, but I'm not "escaping" white space since we're not using the command line interface... So /Library is the root level Library folder.

Hoping all goes well. :)
 
okay, guys, now i am in deep.

i backed up, erased the hard drive, and did a clean install, no migration. did a sys update, ran the 10.4.8 combo update (and everything else). It was hard to test how well it was working, given that it had no apps, but there was no obvious slowdown.

So i tried what Lt Major Burns advised:
once your back on top, open /Applications/Utilities/NetInfo Manager. click on 'Users', in the main window, and then your name. where it says 'home' at the bottom, change the path to the exact path of your backed up home folder, which will be /Volumes/[external HDD name]/[your old home folder name].
Click to expand...

Now, I can't login. i put in my password and it says "you can't login to jennie at this time"

I know the password is right and my user name and shorter name are the same as the old one. I did add /Users/ to the path, so it read /Volumes/tiger backup 1-13-07/Users/jennie

I must have done something wrong. How do I get back in to fix it? I really don't want to do the whole thing again...but I can if i have to, tonight. for now I am running off the panther backup on my firewire drive.

what now?!?
jennie
 
it's that 'users' addition i think. the path should read directly to the folder that was your home folder. is there any way to get into a desktop environment?
 
i am in a desktop environment, because i am running from a bootable backup of my old panther system. Which, btw, works great. no issues as all.

anyway, i can open the harddrive, look at the folders, they don't appear to be locked. I just don't anything about the "command lines" or how to the get in and fix it.

I add users because the original home path had users, and because that was in fact the path: tiger backup/users/jennie

thanks
jennie
 
if Burns doesn't get back to you about his suggestion, then you may have to do a little single-user-mode command-line hocus-pocus.

Set your boot disk to the newly installed and updated OS X.

To boot into single user mode, restart and immediately hold down command+s (that's the apple key and the "s" key simultaneously.)

When the white text on black screen stops scrolling you will be left at a prompt like:
localhost:/ root#

Commands entered on the command line will run when you hitting the return key. Rudimentary line editing is possible with the right and left arrow keys, and delete key.

Type> mount -uw /
Type> sh /etc/rc

More scrolling text... Wait till it's stopped. It may or may not automagically return the prompt to you, but after 5 or 10 seconds of no scrolling, hit the return key. If it's done, you get the prompt...

Then you can proceed with the hocus pocus.

I believe the command you'll need to enter to return to the non-redirected post-updates condition will be:

dscl . -create /Users/jennie NFSHomeDirectory "/Users/jennie"

Or you could enter the redirection path with any corrections necessary...
if there is no error reported, then:
Type> reboot

The machine will reboot and your user folder will have been reset.
I have no idea why Burn's suggestion didn't work, but I generaly steer well clear of redirecting home folders, particularly to another drive.
 
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