[geeks] More Fun with Leopard

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

10.5.2 fixed almost all of my X11 complaints.  The system deals with
monitor detach/attach events as gracefully as 10.4 did.  X11 doesn't
drop/regain focus nearly as often as before (once or twice a day instead
of once every 5 or 6 minutes).  X11 window management is actually sane
now--I don't have windows getting stuck under the menubar anymore.

But the update has completely horked VMware worse than even before
VMware worked around the kernel bug in 10.5.1.  In the bad old days of
10.5.0 and 10.5.1 running VMware 1.1, high network or CPU utilization in
the VM could lock the kernel for I/O.  There'd be a handle that'd be
unable to flush.  vmware-vmx would eventually crash and burn, and the
only way to reboot the Mac would be reboot -qn.  'sync' would time-out
trying to flush the dangling handle from the VM, but disk-writes would
be mostly sane, so the brutal reboot wouldn't really trash anything.

VMware Fusion 1.1.1 fixed that and I could actually use my Mac again.
After installing the X11 package from my 10.4.10 install DVD, I even had
a workable X configuration.

So, when 10.5.2 came out, I ripped out the 10.4 X11 stuff and
reinstalled the 10.5 X11 stuff, and got a 99% working X11 setup again.
Whee!  Also, it doesn't KP when I plug in my aircard and try to connect
to the Internet anymore, either.

But now VMware freezes.  It grabs the mouse pointer and locks -hard-.  I
can Cmd-tab to another application, and I have full use of the keyboard
but no mouse.  Killing VMware doesn't give it back, either.  Even before
killing it, the VM thinks it's still alive (UI elements in the guest
still do whatever twittering they normally do), but I/O goes off into
the ether, as evidenced by a lovely bout of NTFS corruption seen after a
reboot.

I think tomorrow might be the day I bite the bullet and buy a large
enough external disk to back up this Mac and roll back to 10.4.11.  I've
had two such freezes already today, one of which left me with needing to
restore my VM from a ghost image.

I have a growing pile of Win32 code I absolutely -have- to churn out
today, and Apple's extended beta-test program that they seem to call a
production release isn't helping me shrink it.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "There is no such thing as a short of reserves...
Elgin, TX         |  one bank can have a problem...the Fed can print
USA               |  money, there is no shortage."
.                 |     --Jim Glassman, US Economist, JPMorgan Chase