SMC update doesn't launch on case-sensitive file system: SOLUTION

[chris11]

Hi,

MBA late 2008, 10.5.6.

I've just got stuck in an infinite loop with Software Updates: it kept on
showing - and I kept on dl and installing - "MacBook Air SMC Firmware
Update 1.1" again and again. The update never launched, though.

I found this very annoying and investigated it. A system.log entry
gave it away:

com.apple.launchd[71] (com.apple.updater.macbookair.smc.110.autolaunch[117]): posix_spawnp("/Applications/Utilities/MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update.app/Contents/MacOS/MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update", ...): No such file or directory

Turns out the path on disk is like the above but with "AIR" twice instead
of "Air". I'm using a *case-sensitive* HFS+ file system, so for
me "AIR" is a different path than "Air", hence the problem.

My work around was to adding symbolic links from Terminal:

cd /Applications/Utilities/
ln -s "MacBook AIR SMC Firmware Update.app" "MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update.app"
cd "MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update.app/Contents/MacOS"
ln -s "MacBook AIR SMC Firmware Update" "MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update"

after rebooting the firmware update launched Ok. I've broken out of
the infinite loop

Mmm.. maybe choosing to have my HFS+ "case-sensitive" was not a
good idea after all?! On the other hand I can't believe Apple QA doesn't
have a single box with a case-sensitive file system that could have caught
this regression...

Bye,
Chris.