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Drawbacks of cloning 10.4/10.5 installs to other PPC macs?

JRDN

JRDN

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 24, 2015
60
21
Are there any reasons I shouldn't clone my Leopard and Tiger installs to my other PPC macs? I tend to have a 'master' copy that I clone around. Clean installs would be ideal, sure, but I like getting everything how I like it and it's such breeze using SuperDuper! and target disk mode over FW.

I only ask because I recently cloned an install to a new iMac G4 20" 1.25 and Leopard crawls and cpu is at 100% seemingly for no reason.
 
One drawback is features.

For instance, I cloned my hard drive from my dead TiBook/400 in late 2009 to a new (to me) 17" PowerBook G4. It never occurred to me to wonder why the keyboard backlight never worked until I got Leopard and updated my install.

All of a sudden certain features specific to the 17" PowerBook appeared and became functional (such as the keyboard backlight) simply because the install was proceeding on my 17" PowerBook. I didn't have these features before because the Mac seemed to assume that it was still a 15.1" Titanium PowerBook.

So, there is that.

As to your CPU issues, try checking Spotlight. It may be it's trying to index a disk that is no longer "available".
 
Missing features, as mentioned, would probably be the biggest drawback. The scrolling trackpad on my 12" PowerBook doesn't work under Tiger because it's a cloned install.
 
eyoungren said:
One drawback is features.

For instance, I cloned my hard drive from my dead TiBook/400 in late 2009 to a new (to me) 17" PowerBook G4. It never occurred to me to wonder why the keyboard backlight never worked until I got Leopard and updated my install.

All of a sudden certain features specific to the 17" PowerBook appeared and became functional (such as the keyboard backlight) simply because the install was proceeding on my 17" PowerBook. I didn't have these features before because the Mac seemed to assume that it was still a 15.1" Titanium PowerBook.

So, there is that.

As to your CPU issues, try checking Spotlight. It may be it's trying to index a disk that is no longer "available".
Click to expand...

MultiFinder17 said:
Missing features, as mentioned, would probably be the biggest drawback. The scrolling trackpad on my 12" PowerBook doesn't work under Tiger because it's a cloned install.
Click to expand...


Interesting! I'll have to keep that in mind if something isn't working as intended later on.
I'll check my spotlight to see what it's trying to do on my iMac
 
I take from this then, that the cloned install sees itself as the original donor machine and despite having all the original kexts/extensions present in Tiger/Leopard, doesn't employ them as it never re-scans the hardware?
Is there a preference or plist that can be deleted to force the machine to catalogue it's ID and hardware again?
 
Dronecatcher said:
I take from this then, that the cloned install sees itself as the original donor machine and despite having all the original kexts/extensions present in Tiger/Leopard, doesn't employ them as it never re-scans the hardware?
Is there a preference or plist that can be deleted to force the machine to catalogue it's ID and hardware again?
Click to expand...
Right. That's exactly what happened with my cloned install to my 17" PowerBook. And installing Leopard (the cloned install was Tiger) was how I figured it out. At that point I'd been used to my TiBook so I wasn't questioning any missing features of my 17" PB.

No preference or plist I know of that would force anything.

A reinstall of the OS from the actual Mac though would probably do it. But putting everything back right after you're done may make that more trouble than it's worth.
 
Interesting, given that these days the entire OS is installed every time (unlike in the Classic OS days when you could select to install just the features for the Mac you were installing on if you wanted to save space - when the OS was universal 68k/PPC you could even install just 68k, just PPC or both if you wanted to be able to boot the resulting install on both types of system, whereas with Leopard you have to install both architectures).

Doesn't it update the kext caches if any changes to the Extensions folder are detected eg re-applying the latest system update (I'd go for the latest Security Update rather than the x.x.x update, as that will be the newest and not risk overwriting anything with older files), or move a kext out and back in (repair permissions afterwards to make sure they haven't been messed up by doing so)?
 
Intell said:
There is no drawback or problem to cloning a system. Any features that are not working can be resolved by rebuilding the kext cache. OS X is almost designed to be cloned without a problem.
Click to expand...
Wish I'd known that then instead of living with a 17" PowerBook that had no keyboard backlight for over a year! :D
 
There shouldn't be a severe issue, as Intell said.

There are some weird machine-specific builds of the Mac OS, but I don't think that affects us under 10.4/10.5 unless you're trying to clone from Intel to PowerPC (obviously DON'T!). However, for a generic install it'll go just fine.
 
You can clone an installation of Leopard from a PowerPC Mac to an Intell Mac and the other way around without a problem. The entire OS is universal and can run on both without a problem.
 
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Intell said:
You can clone an installation of Leopard from a PowerPC Mac to an Intell Mac and the other way around without a problem. The entire OS is universal and can run on both without a problem.
Click to expand...

I could have swore there exists an Intel-specific 10.5 build. I know there was one for 10.4 (or maybe that was universal also?).
 
All Leopard discs, even restore discs, are fully universal. Tiger was always only ever PowerPC or Intell. Except for Tiger Server, the later versions of that were universal.
 
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Would any applications have something that uses some unique number to them. thinking of something that uses services/applications network based off top of my head.

If an application installs and gives its client some of number (GUID, UID, basically some form of ID and names vary) when cloned those new clients may not registers since the cloned is that ID holder. Other end knows of 1 ID 12345...3 more trying to come as that get told nope.....

Not saying this a show stopper. Just saying have a strategy in place to resolve and if lucky streamline however ID problems can be fixed. Most applications its just mod a file or run a command I have seen.
 
So if you cloned a Tiger install from an iSight iMac G5 to say, a PowerBook G4, will the photobooth app be functional with an external webcam?
 
hiddenmarkov said:
Would any applications have something that uses some unique number to them. thinking of something that uses services/applications network based off top of my head.

If an application installs and gives its client some of number (GUID, UID, basically some form of ID and names vary) when cloned those new clients may not registers since the cloned is that ID holder. Other end knows of 1 ID 12345...3 more trying to come as that get told nope.....

Not saying this a show stopper. Just saying have a strategy in place to resolve and if lucky streamline however ID problems can be fixed. Most applications its just mod a file or run a command I have seen.
Click to expand...
QuarkXPress versions 6 and above (version 6 was the first OS X version) have a threefold copy protection scheme.

It detects for a change in logicboard, hard drive and ram. If it detects a change in any of those it will prompt you to reactivate your copy of XPress the next time you open the app.

This can be a problem with versions 7 and 8 because with those versions Quark started allowing activations on only three computers. If you did not deactivate your copy on the old computer before cloning Quark still sees it as an activation and there's no way to clear it except through Quark support.

So, yeah, there's at least one app I know of.
 
MacCubed said:
So if you cloned a Tiger install from an iSight iMac G5 to say, a PowerBook G4, will the photobooth app be functional with an external webcam?
Click to expand...

Yes, if that webcam is supported in other OS X applications like iChat. All you really need is the Photobooth application. Everything else is already in the OS.
 
Intell said:
All Leopard discs, even restore discs, are fully universal. Tiger was always only ever PowerPC or Intell. Except for Tiger Server, the later versions of that were universal.
Click to expand...
Unless, of course, you go in with Monolingual.
 
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