Re-installing Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard upgrade improves stabilityRe-installing Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard upgrade improves stability

Install it again, Sam. That's the word on the Mac OS X 10.5.1 update to Leopard.Weve been testing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on a number of machines. While the 10.5.1 upgrade has improved stability, weve still encountered an abnormal number of hangs, as well as applications whose performance degrades tremendously.

For some reason, this morning we decided to run Disk Utility on one of our test machines. (Its a good idea to run the Repair Disk Permissions operation occasionally.) Surprisingly, it came back with a set of errors that weve never seen before  and those errors stayed there, even if we re-ran the operation:

Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Locum" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconfig" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writeconfig" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/authopen" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool" has been modified and will not be repaired. Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired. When researching this problem, we discovered several message threads, including this one on Apples support board, Is this Disk Utility (Repair Permissions) result OK?

To make a long story short, it is advised to download and reinstall the Mac OS X 10.5.1 upgrade, even on machines that have already been upgraded. You can download the full upgrade from Apple. Note that it is a 110MB file.

After reinstalling the 10.5.1 upgrade on our test Mac, performance and stability improved. Better yet, the Disk Utility errors went away  well, most of them did.

We are now in the process of beginning a Leopard deployment  and will be using the full 110MB upgrade, not the version that comes via Software Update. I recommend that you do the same.

Sadly, it appears that Leopard isnt some of Apples best work. While this may sound like a broken record, lets hope they get it right by 10.5.2.