Mac OS X 10.3.1 and Filevault Issues Resolved

[MacRumors]

Apple posted a knowledgebase article (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25635) that reveals that the Mac OS X 10.3.1 update does specifically address the FileVault preferences loss (http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2003/11/20031103213525.shtml) that occurred with Mac OS X 10.3.
FileVault normally asks to reclaim space before the computer sleeps, restarts, or shuts down. In some cases, you can lose some preference settings after space is reclaimed. Download and install Mac OS X 10.3.1 or later to avoid this issue.

[gwuMACaddict]

well thats good

[beerguy]

You first...

[ksz]

That's not just good, that's an absolute requirement. How will I or anyone trust FileVault again if Apple did not disclose the specific nature of the problem they fixed? Actually, I am still a bit reluctant to turn it on again because corruption might occur through other uses. Alas, this is always a possibility...hence the standard disclaimer "We make no guarantees whether express or implied...". However, I will back up my data and use FileVault again because the possibility of my data falling into a thief's hands is worse than the possibility of losing it.

[Mr. G4]

Does anyone know if it would fix the problem that already occured or it will prevent it from happening?

Because I could not turn my FV off and all my data are corrupted. Does this will fix the corruption and let me turn it off?

[billyboy]

Originally posted by ksz
I will back up my data and use FileVault again because the possibility of my data falling into a thief's hands is worse than the possibility of losing it.

If you are unsure of filevault why not just create a New disk image in Disk Utility and have a password protected folder where you can put new stuff as you go along.

[sethypoo]

I think the best course of action here is to leave File Vault off until we see a few more enhancements to it. I am going to wait until OS 10.3.3 is released before I turn it back on. File Vault gave me the biggest headache ever (yes, even more than my old windows machine did). It erased all my iTunes playlists, and complete nixed *every* preferance in my *entire* home folder. Resetting all these has proved to be difficult, and I'm still not finished.

I want plenty of time and updates to go by before I let File Vault touch my home folder again.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by billyboy
If you are unsure of filevault why not just create a New disk image in Disk Utility and have a password protected folder where you can put new stuff as you go along.

Mainly because that could, in theory, be hacked by someone who really wants your data.

[ksz]

Originally posted by billyboy
If you are unsure of filevault why not just create a New disk image in Disk Utility and have a password protected folder where you can put new stuff as you go along.
Like I said, I will use FileVault again, but I will first backup my data -- it would be a bit foolish not to take this precaution after having suffered from FileVault corruption.

While FileVault can be used for many purposes, noting that laptop theft is on the rise, it is targeted for laptop users. While there are other ways to password protect data, FileVault is designed to make this transparent and secure. Your files are *always* encrypted. If you had to periodically move your files into a secure folder, that leaves you vulnerable during the interim periods.

[aftk2]

From the article:

Important: If the computer is force-restarted or power is lost while disk space is being reclaimed, data loss can occur. Mac OS X 10.3.1 does not address this type of data loss.

Hmm...wouldn't it more adviseable for them to just reclaim the disk space once a user has initiated a restart or shutdown? I imagine that some Macs have high uptime, so it might be awhile between reclamation...but hard drives are big these days. How much space are we talking about?

[ksz]

Originally posted by aftk2
Hmm...wouldn't it more adviseable for them to just reclaim the disk space once a user has initiated a restart or shutdown?
FileVault issues this request during shutdown. It would likely have to issue it when total disk space begins to run low, but I've not gotten there (yet).

[wPod]

I turned FileVault on after I downloaded 10.3.1. It took so long to turn it on I have not had time to try it out. See if any of my settings are lost or there are any other harmful side effects. Has anyone tried with success? I will post further comments once I have had time to test it out. Oh yeah. . . I backed EVERYTHING up just in case :-)

[kryten2000]

But did it fix the crappy performance in iMovie & FCE when capturing to your home directory? I'll test tonight. Otherwise file vault is useless to me.

[a6rnh]

the update still does nothing to help the terrible battery performance on my 15AI, in fact it seems to have got worse - was on 2 hrs when i restarted after updating, 1 minute later it is down to 1:35! pathetic, never mind security on portables, its battery life we need! anybody else have major probs with battery life? - yes i have turned down all the settings and have 'longest battery life' selected, no external devices, no airport, no bluetooth - still never get more than 2:30. not happy...

[ksz]

Originally posted by a6rnh
...the update still does nothing to help the terrible battery performance on my 15AI, in fact it seems to have got worse...
This is off-topic, but still a good question. I'm curious, did you "calibrate" (I think that's the term) your battery according to the user's manual when you first got your PB?

[GigaWire]

Originally posted by kryten2000
But did it fix the crappy performance in iMovie & FCE when capturing to your home directory? I'll test tonight. Otherwise file vault is useless to me.

So capture to a folder OUTSIDE of your Home directory, then move your project back in to your Home folder if it absolutley must be in there. Really not that big of a problem...

[ITR 81]

Using it now with np's.

[kryten2000]

Hey, I dont hide my porn . I relize I can capture to another directory but I'm still concerned with performance. Has anyone tried capturing from a dv cam while fault vault is on ?

[coumerelli]

Originally posted by GigaWire
So capture to a folder OUTSIDE of your Home directory, then move your project back in to your Home folder if it absolutley must be in there. Really not that big of a problem...

I don't think that it's such a BIG issue to have it in there (personally speaking - don't mean to put words in other people's mouths), just that these directories are the default settings for said programs. Twould just be nice if we could have some embedded folders opted out of the process. And maybe there is, and I just don't know about it.

And re: poor battery life on 15AI powerbook. I use airport in both locations (so I can't turn it off) and I find that I get about 1 minute per % point - so at best usually 100 minutes of battery life for me. Additionally, it takes one and half to two minutes for every one to charge. So frustrating when a few years ago I heard powerbooks got like 5 hours! Must be nice.:(

note: 10.3.0 panther

[billyboy]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Mainly because that could, in theory, be hacked by someone who really wants your data.

If that´s the case with home made disk images from Disk Utility, then from what I have read, maybe you shouldn´t rely too much on File Vault either?

"FileVault is a frontend to the Disk Image solution. When you use FileVault, your Home Directory is really a disk image that is mounted at login and unmounted at logoff. It is a sparse disk image so the size of the disk image file can increase and decrease."

Or does File Vault have more than 128 bit encryption?

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by coumerelli
I don't think that it's such a BIG issue to have it in there (personally speaking - don't mean to put words in other people's mouths), just that these directories are the default settings for said programs. Twould just be nice if we could have some embedded folders opted out of the process. And maybe there is, and I just don't know about it.

And re: poor battery life on 15AI powerbook. I use airport in both locations (so I can't turn it off) and I find that I get about 1 minute per % point - so at best usually 100 minutes of battery life for me. Additionally, it takes one and half to two minutes for every one to charge. So frustrating when a few years ago I heard powerbooks got like 5 hours! Must be nice.:(

note: 10.3.0 panther

Just to add to this off topic disussion, I am running a 12" PowerBook G4 rev. A, with AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth always on, and I'm averaging 3 hours of battery life, more if I turn off Bluetooth and iTunes. Is this just because I have a smaller screen that eats away at less battery life?

Edited for spelling errors.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by ITR 81
Using it now with np's.

Try these two things to make sure it is really running without any problems:

1. Buy and download a song from the iTunes Music Store. Can you play it and access the rest of your library?

2. Import some DV footage with a DV camera into iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Does this corrupt anything?

If you can do these two things, then you are truly running a fixed version of File Vault.

For those who want easy encryption of simple documents or mpeg/jpeg/avi/wmv files on your Mac, try downloading a program called Cypher. It's at http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=cypher&tg=dl-2003&search=+Go%21+

Don't worry, it's freeware, and it works like a charm.

[ksz]

Originally posted by me
This is off-topic, but still a good question. I'm curious, did you "calibrate" (I think that's the term) your battery according to the user's manual when you first got your PB?
Apple's Knowledge Base has this to say on the subject which is also mentioned in the user's manual.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86284

It might be that the microprocessor inside your battery is giving false information to the PowerBook and leading to early sleep/shutdown. Try the suggestions in this knowledgebase article. If that makes any difference, I'm sure folks on this forum would like to know.

[Sherman]

It's like throwing a match on gasoline, but...

I have an old clamshell iBook SE, and I have the same 1% per minute thing, the addendum to this is, that it sits at 0% for THREE HOURS. I've tried calibrating it multiple times, resetting the PMU, etc. Nothing seems to work. It also does this in OS 9.

I've given up on it. I think the difference is that your battery gives the signal to sleep, while my battery has no microprocessor on it, that's done by my computer which may or may not do it differently.

[cnladd]

Re: FileVault, performance, battery life, and capturing DV movies.

Unless you need your DV movies to be secured, there is no reason to be capturing them to a FileVault-protected directory. There is always going to be a performance hit when using FileVault. We're talking 128-bit encryption on the fly, here. Sure, in normal day-to-day use I don't notice that much of a difference, but there are situations that it can be problematic.

Battery life will suffer when using FileVault, because of this encryption. The processor will be hit more than normal, which will drain battery life faster. If you'd rather have the faster performance, then FileVault obviously isn't for you.

In the past, the easiest ways of acheiving the functionality of FileVault was to have an encrypted disk image or to use a program to manually encrypt your software. Most people would never do this, instead thinking that it wasn't worth the time and effort to go through this manual process. FileVault makes this easier. It's intended primarily for use by those who have a need to store sensitive information on their hard disks. It's intended for people who feel that the security of their files is more important than the performance of their laptops.

A previous poster summed it up perfectly when they announced that they would be trying the updated FileVault again: they said the theft of their data would be worse than the outright loss of the data. This is who FileVault is primarily intended for.

[ksz]

Originally posted by Sherman
I've given up on it. I think the difference is that your battery gives the signal to sleep, while my battery has no microprocessor on it, that's done by my computer which may or may not do it differently.
Sometimes too much intelligence is a bad thing! At least you're fortunate that your iBook keeps going and going even while the battery meter reads 0%, but sadly you'll just keep guessing as to how much time you've got left.

[punter]

Originally posted by cnladd
Re: FileVault, performance, battery life, and capturing DV movies.

...There is always going to be a performance hit when using FileVault.

Hear hear. I don't think not being able to capture dv footage and encypt it 128bit is a bug, I think your computer just isn't fast enough.

Your computer has to do more work to use this feature. The processor will be busier. Battery life will go down. You should expect that.

[ksz]

Originally posted by sethypoo
Just to add to this off topic disussion, I am running a 12" PowerBook G4 rev. A, with AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth always on, and I'm averaging 3 hours of battery life, more if I turn off Bluetooth and iTunes. Is this just because I have a smaller screen that eats away at less battery life?
All else being equal, if the only difference between two LCD panels is the number of pixels, the panel with fewer pixels will consume less power.

Similarly, adding more memory will result in more power consumption. All those extra transistors, sense amps, and bitcell capacitors have to be kept powered. However, if the O/S keeps unused memory flushed to 0, then bitcell capacitors can be left discharged, thus conserving power. If a bit is set high (1), the bitcell capacitor is charged up, left alone to idle for a brief moment, then refreshed. If it's left idle too long, the charge naturally dissipates or leaks. But if a bit is set low (0), it's not necessary to charge it or to refresh it. So battery life will depend not only on how much memory you've got, but also on how much of that memory is non-zero. This probably applies to LCD panels as well -- black pixels will consume less power (most of the power is used by the backlight anyway). If someone is familiar with DRAM/LCD design, feel free to comment.

I am getting on average 3 hours 15 minutes of battery life on a 1.25 GHz AlBook with 1 GB memory and Airport / Bluetooth turned on.

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by cnladd
Re: FileVault, performance, battery life, and capturing DV movies.

Unless you need your DV movies to be secured, there is no reason to be capturing them to a FileVault-protected directory. There is always going to be a performance hit when using FileVault. We're talking 128-bit encryption on the fly, here. Sure, in normal day-to-day use I don't notice that much of a difference, but there are situations that it can be problematic.

Battery life will suffer when using FileVault, because of this encryption. The processor will be hit more than normal, which will drain battery life faster. If you'd rather have the faster performance, then FileVault obviously isn't for you.

In the past, the easiest ways of acheiving the functionality of FileVault was to have an encrypted disk image or to use a program to manually encrypt your software. Most people would never do this, instead thinking that it wasn't worth the time and effort to go through this manual process. FileVault makes this easier. It's intended primarily for use by those who have a need to store sensitive information on their hard disks. It's intended for people who feel that the security of their files is more important than the performance of their laptops.

A previous poster summed it up perfectly when they announced that they would be trying the updated FileVault again: they said the theft of their data would be worse than the outright loss of the data. This is who FileVault is primarily intended for.

Amen!
BTW, When I had File Vault on, I had no loss of battery life.....

[sethypoo]

Originally posted by ksz
All else being equal, if the only difference between two LCD panels is the number of pixels, the panel with fewer pixels will consume less power.

Similarly, adding more memory will result in more power consumption. All those extra transistors, sense amps, and bitcell capacitors have to be kept powered. However, if the O/S keeps unused memory flushed to 0, then bitcell capacitors can be left discharged, thus conserving power. If a bit is set high (1), the bitcell capacitor is charged up, left alone to idle for a brief moment, then refreshed. If it's left idle too long, the charge naturally dissipates or leaks. But if a bit is set low (0), it's not necessary to charge it or to refresh it. So battery life will depend not only on how much memory you've got, but also on how much of that memory is non-zero. This probably applies to LCD panels as well -- black pixels will consume less power (most of the power is used by the backlight anyway). If someone is familiar with DRAM/LCD design, feel free to comment.

I am getting on average 3 hours 15 minutes of battery life on a 1.25 GHz AlBook with 1 GB memory and Airport / Bluetooth turned on.

So does OS X keep the bet set low (0) or high (1)?

[ksz]

Originally posted by sethypoo
So does OS X keep the bet set low (0) or high (1)?
Don't really know. This would be useful only IF there is a material difference in power consumption. I am speculating that there is because the memory bay gets fairly warm which indicates that a fair amount of energy is being consumed (and released). However, I'd like to hear from someone with relevant experience.

[switchingGeek]

Originally posted by ksz

Similarly, adding more memory will result in more power consumption. All those extra transistors, sense amps, and bitcell capacitors have to be kept powered.

However, you also have to balance the fact that the Virtual memory is going to be used much less. So going from something like 128MB->256MB->512MB might actually increase battery life, since the disk uses much much more power. Of course this depends on how many pageouts are seen on the machine.

[ksz]

Originally posted by switchingGeek
However, you also have to balance the fact that the Virtual memory is going to be used much less. So going from something like 128MB->256MB->512MB might actually increase battery life, since the disk uses much much more power. Of course this depends on how many pageouts are seen on the machine.
True, but consider:

1. Hard drives have on-board cache anywhere from 2MB to 8MB. Physical disk I/Os are performed when the cache needs to be written or when it needs to be populated.

2. Virtual Memory implementations in UNIX and Windows NT are similar in several ways. When you launch an application, the O/S treats the application's disk sectors as a memory-mapped file and begins to page-in from that virtual memory right away. Hence applications seem to load and run very quickly because only small segments of the file are loaded into memory.

When a new process is initiated, a page fault is triggered, causing the first page to load. Because the initialization an application performs takes up a fair bit of code, a cascade of page faults occur right away, then subside.

3. Memory that the application allocates from the system heap is subject to VM as well, but this allocation begins life in physical memory and is written out to swap when needed.

Hence, adding more memory does not necessarily reduce the use of VM because applications always start life as memory-mapped files that are paged-in on demand. However, more memory does mean that you have more space in physical memory for larger documents and more concurrent applications.

Power consumption due to disk I/O increases significantly when you approach thrashing conditions. If this is happening, adding more memory will certainly lead to improved battery life.

[chuletilla]

:) great!,

new update, lets do it :o ;) a fast download...

This seems great until...
:eek:

I restarted my powerbook and cannot work on my perpectives again, no finder, 1970 date, only floating in my desktop background.

the beachball keeps on spinning from the very beggining

i restarted 2 times more, i turn it off for 30 minutes, and nothing, i disconected from the LAN, and nothing, please somebody have an advice for this kind of problem?