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Apple Releases OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan With Live Photos Support for Messages, Password Protected Notes

As I mentioned in my previous post I compared the PKG and DMG updaters (omitting the firmware update from the comparison).
Delta updates are really the same in both forms.
Combo updates differ quite a lot, with the differences being almost exclusively related to language specific resources. In short, the OSXUpdCombo10.11.4Auto.pkg doesn't contain many non-English resources while osxupdcombo10.11.4.dmg contains a lot of them. Perhaps the non-English stuff is downloaded on-demand - depending of the actual system locale..? See the attached diff-OSXUpdCombo10.11.4Auto-OSXUpdCombo10.11.4.txt for the full result of the comparison.

tywebb13 said:
Don't forget to update the recovery partition as well. ...
Click to expand...
I don't think it's worth the effort since Apple didn't release the recovery update as they normally would. The last recovery update was released in December along with OS X 10.11.2. Since then there was none and we had 2 more OS X point releases already. While they might have updated the recovery content (didn't check it), either they forgot to release it as another update, or the changes were minor and simply not worth it.
 

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  • diff-OSXUpdCombo10.11.4Auto-OSXUpdCombo10.11.4.txt
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mag01 said:
I don't think it's worth the effort since Apple didn't release the recovery update as they normally would. The last recovery update was released in December along with OS X 10.11.2. Since then there was none and we had 2 more OS X point releases already.
Click to expand...

Well if you want to update the system one would not want an outdated recovery partition. So it should be updated too if you want everything to be up-to-date.

Of course you could run a 10.11.4 system with a 10.11.2 recovery partition but it would be better to have a 10.11.4 system with a 10.11.4 recovery partition.

I permanently keep the Lion RecoveryHDUpdate.dmg and recovery.sh files in my Downloads folder ready for the next full installer to keep the recovery partition up-to-date. I'd rather do it that way rather than run the full installer itself because it is much faster.

The original Lion RecoveryHDUpdate.dmg was intended to update a Lion recovery partition to a 10.7.2 version. But whenever a full installer is released, miraculously this, together with my previous instructions have enabled it to update the recovery partition through EVERY point release from 10.7.3 right up to 10.11.4 and counting!
 
It took hours! I started at 5.30 pm yesterday and it must have finished sometime after 9 as I fell asleep on the sofa. When I woke up at 9.30 pm it was finished. I haven't had a look at it yet as I went to bed shortly afterwards.
 
Sirious said:
Love it when its update day!
Click to expand...
True! I jumped on it immediately, downloaded it, and found it (finally!) excellent as an Apple OS should be. Safari is now responsive, my memory is not heavily used as before (although I'm still on 4GB RAM), and everything looks great. Looking forward checking the rest!
 
tywebb13 said:
Of course you could run a 10.11.4 system with a 10.11.2 recovery partition but it would be better to have a 10.11.4 system with a 10.11.4 recovery partition.
Click to expand...

Why exactly? Unless there is some new feature that is missing, I don't see the point. With a .2 recovery system on a .4 OS X version, you can still command-r boot to recovery and have full functionality, so why bother with updating to a .4 version recovery partition if no new feature is added.

I've seen you post this before and never really understood the point in it. I'm not being argumentative; I just feel like maybe I am missing something?
 
The point is that if they make some important changes to the recovery they publish an update for it. Last time that happened when 10.11.2 was released. Why bother with some lengthy process (download the full ~6GB OS X installer + ~400MB either that Lion or later recovery update and update the recovery using these) when Apple didn't bother releasing the recovery update separately?
 
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tywebb13 said:
Well there certainly is no point in updating the system and leaving your recovery partition outdated - especially if you know the recovery partition can be updated too.
Click to expand...
I'm still not seeing a reason to bother with this. You seem to be saying .4 is better than .2 because it is a newer version, but beyond that, what exactly is improved upon by doing this manual process you describe? I have not updated manually, so presumable still have a .2 version recovery partition. What exactly would manually updating to a .4 version do for me that I cannot do now with the .2 version?

Again, I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just want to understand exactly why anybody would want to fuss with this.
 
mag01 said:
Why bother
Click to expand...

Well if you prefer to have an outdated recovery partition, then that's OK. That's your computer, not mine.

I prefer mine to be up-to-date.

Weaselboy said:
With a .2 recovery system on a .4 OS X version, you can still command-r boot to recovery and have full functionality, so why bother with updating to a .4 version recovery partition
Click to expand...

Yeah well I said before that a 10.11.2 recovery partition will still work. But updating it to a 10.11.4 version isn't mandatory, it is a choice you can make
 
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Yes they might have done some fixes here and there, but they were most likely minor.
As I plan to perform one full install of 10.11.4 soon, I may (but only quickly) check the differences between the main apps in 10.11.4 and 10.11.2 recovery, but maybe I won't really bother spending some additional time on that.
 
chrfr said:
If you're so inclined to do this, you can save a lot of work by using this tool: ....... (link removed)
Click to expand...

There is one major difference between my method and this one.

It's a legal difference.

The thing inside the Lion recovery update that allows it to update all other recovery partitions from 10.7.2 up to 10.11.4 and counting - is a thing called dmtest.

That is proprietary software owned by apple and the only way to legally obtain it is to download the Lion recovery update.

Although it is technically possible to extract dmtest from this and insert it into a smaller app to do the same thing, it is actually illegal to do so.

The method I described is perfectly legal because I gave the link from which you can LEGALLY obtain dmtest.

Sorry if I sound a bit harsh. I usually encourage alternative methods. But not in this case - because it is illegal.
 
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d14b0ll0s said:
Same story (also a 2012 Mini; kernel panic; launchd issues). Reinstalling through Recovery did not work (1 hour), had to recover 400GB from TimeMachine (5 hours), and now it's downloading all my e-mails and iCloud data (1 hour). Rather *hesitant* to update again as well…
I wonder what the reason might be…

Hi, by the way (new to the forum).
Click to expand...

Do you or BravoTangoPapa by any chance use any of the following kernel extensions?

com.driver.LogJoystick (2.0)
com.sektioneins.driver.SUIDGuardNG (1.0.6)
org.dungeon.driver.SATSMARTDriver (0.8.1)

They might interfere with the update.

You can find out by issuing the following command on the console

kextstat -l | grep -v com.apple
 
I finally got my MAC back

(I have 3 drives, 2 are clones)
1 what I did
A. I booted off my 2nd drive 12-2015 clone as I should have cloned before this update, that was my biggest mistake.
B. I cloned my 1st main drive to my 3rd drive (even though it's porked)
C. I went into recovery with the main drive, erased the main OSX partition, then loaded a fresh new copy on my 1st main drive.
D. When it was near done it asked me if I wanted to move files and settings over from anouther drive or computer, so I said yes and put my 2nd drive in and copied the data to my new formatted drive with 10.11.4

All is well now

2. I did notice that my recovery is being updated automatically to the latest after each update, so I don't know why anyone has to manually update their recovery when mine is for a fact. Unless maybe you are doing betas, then it must be getting confused.

That's it
Thanks
Running fine now on 10.11.4 with all my stuff back.
 
If you use the full installer for 10.11.4 then that will give you a 10.11.4 recovery partition too.

When you use a delta or combo update though this is when it doesn't update the recovery partition - and then if you want to (legally) update it, you can use the manual method I described before.
 
aidler said:
Do you or BravoTangoPapa by any chance use any of the following kernel extensions?

com.driver.LogJoystick (2.0)
com.sektioneins.driver.SUIDGuardNG (1.0.6)
org.dungeon.driver.SATSMARTDriver (0.8.1)

They might interfere with the update.

You can find out by issuing the following command on the console

kextstat -l | grep -v com.apple
Click to expand...

I do not use/have any of the kernel extensions you have listed here.

At this point, I could just go ahead and do a fresh install... of course there's that pesky little problem with FaceTime and Messages not working after a fresh install of 10.11.4.

How many betas were there for this release again!? There doesn't appear to be any QA with Apple software any more.
 
Does that command
Code: 
kextstat -l | grep -v com.apple
list any non-Apple kexts at all?

Also when a kernel panic occurs, its details are written to a file in the /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports directory. Can you locate that panic file there and post it here? If there won't be any 3rd party kexts you may consider reporting that to Apple via https://bugreport.apple.com (free developer account required to log in)
 
I notice that clicking on Facebook items in the notification center no longer brings you the website (does nothing).
 
BravoTangoPapa said:
I do not use/have any of the kernel extensions you have listed here.

At this point, I could just go ahead and do a fresh install... of course there's that pesky little problem with FaceTime and Messages not working after a fresh install of 10.11.4.

How many betas were there for this release again!? There doesn't appear to be any QA with Apple software any more.
Click to expand...

Dont' know. I did not participate in the beta.
BTW it is now confirmed that the SUIDGuard kernel extension leades to the kernel panik "unexpected sigkill of launchd"

https://github.com/sektioneins/SUIDGuard/issues/12
 
10.11.4 killed my 'start screen saver' hot corner. I've tried turning the feature off and back on, restarted, etc, with no luck. Any advice?
 
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