El Capitan failed update

As of late, I am getting a bit frustrated with the problems when upgrading Mac OS.  I tried upgrading 2 systems last night from Yosemite to El Capitan.  One was successful and one was not.  If my memory servers me right, I had the same batting average from upgrading to Yosemite.  I am not unhappy that one of the upgrades failed but rather HOW it failed and the state it left my iMac.

After what seemed like a successful upgrade to El Capitan, I then opened up the App Store to upgrade the other outstanding applications.  Each of the update I tried failed, so I decided to restart my iMac to try again.  This is when all the problem manifested itself.  During the startup, the Apple logo would come up along with a progress bar.  Unfortunately no matter how long I waited, there was NO progress on the grey screen.

After doing some quick research, it is sad to say there was quite a bit of discussion of this exact same problem.  I tried doing both a SMC and PRAM reset without success after disconnected all unnecessary peripherals.  All the other discussions seem to lead down the path of either a hard disk problem or kext issue.  Tackling the easier of the 2 possibilities first, I booted into recovery mode and did a repair disk.  It turned out there was an issue that was repaired.  However on restart, the problem persisted.

So the next step is to check into kext in more detail.  So unless you are a geek, you would not know what a kext is.  Kext stands for kernel extensions.  They are used to extend the operating system by allowing additional code to be loaded when the Mac starts up.  So it is quite possibly I had a 3rd party kext that was incompatible with El Capitan and preventing the startup.  I forgot to mention that once I got the grey screen, I could NOT boot into safe mode as well.  Some users opted to do a clean install at this point rather than waste time troubleshooting.  Since I did not want to spend the time to ensure everything was backed up to my satisfaction AND re-install all my applications right now, I persisted in trying to find a solution.

Next I booted in Recovery mode again, and installed El Capitan again.  This took awhile since there was a download and install to wait on.  Once it was finished, I was back once again using El Capitan.  I tried to do some application updates.  They worked!  Hoping for the best, I decided to restart again.....and up comes the grey screen again.  This is ridiculous!  So I re-did the install again to get back into El Capitan.  While waiting, I continued researching and found my ultimate solution on superuser.  It turns out that I recently installed Syncmate but was not using.  I think I was trying to copy some files over to an Android tablet.

Here is what I did:
1)  You can get to Terminal app from the Recovery mode on startup.  Or as I was already in El Capitan, I just ran Terminal.
2)  If you are using the default hard drive name "Macintosh HD", type in
 cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions
3) Execute command:
  ls -la | grep EltimaAsync.kext
4a) If nothing appeared after this command, then the problem is not caused by SyncMate 4.
4b) If something is returned then execute these 2 command : 
 sudo rm -rf ./EltimaAsync.kext
 sudo kextcache -update-volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/
5) Restart your Mac.

Whoomp there it is!

I was continue with initial thought when I started writing this up.  In my opinion, the main reason most people have switched from Windows to a Mac is that Apple has hidden away all the technical difficulties one might experience in supporting an operating system.  It is supposed to be so easy that you just push a button and the magic happens.  With the difficulties I have experienced, how can the novice user ever recover from a problem like this?  Instead if the update failed, and the system was rolled back that would be definitely be more acceptable.  Apple.....please listen....you cannot leave your users in this kind of mess.  I know you can restore from Time Machine, but that it still not a user friendly solution!

Lyrics for iTunes

I recently added a few albums to iTunes and wanted to add the lyrics. The applications and widgets I used in the past no longer works. I did manage to find a dashboard widget for my Mac called TunesTEXT. I was really impressed with it. It managed to find lyrics for lots of songs that I could not previously find before. Give it a try!

Weak Cable Modem Signal

Recently I encountered a problem where the link from my ISP to the cable modem was not working. A technician from Rogers determined it to be an issue with cable from the curb to my house. After he resolved, he mentioned that the signal to my cable modem was weaker than it should be. Since he was willing, I took the opportunity to discuss a few things with him.

In all likelihood, the weak signal is due to the extremely cable long run from across the basement where the cable line comes in and up to the 2nd floor and then across another room. The technician also said another factor could be the cable itself (over 15 years old). I decided that I should try to do something about this.

The first thing I wanted to do is relocate the cable modem to the basement to reduce the cable run. As I wanted to maintain a wireless presence upstairs, I needed to introduce a 2nd router. My plan was to have the routers each connected to a gigabit switch and the switches would be connected to complete the network.

Here is what I did:

Basement Router
- connect the cable modem to the WAN port of the router
- set the IP address to 192.168.1.1
- set up DHCP server
- optionally set up wireless with exactly the same settings as the upstairs router
- connect the router to the basement gigabit switch

Upstairs Router
- the WAN port should be empty
- set the IP address to 192.168.1.2
- set the gateway address to be 192.168.1.1
- disable DHCP server
- leave existing setting for wireless
- connect the router to the upstairs gigabit switch
- make sure the gigabit switches are connected

The setup works for me. When I checked my cable modem (192.168.100.1), I can see that the signal to noise ratio and the power level have improved. Unfortunately I did not plan ahead to test the real speed to the computers upstairs. Even though the ISP cable run is shorter, my network cable run is longer.

The next step is for me to replace some of the old cables.