Being a list of things which make me want to throw a computer out the window

• On my MacBook Mail.app got thoroughly confused, and was unable to send mail, change SMTP server, or edit the SMTP server list – the popup menu had several blank lines instead. In the end nuking ~/Library/Accounts/ (via another admin account) seemed to restore things, though I had to reconfigure all my accounts.
• On my Mac Pro the SMTP server settings were OK, but various other Mail settings were reset, such as loading remote images, default composing as Rich Text, turning on the Junk Mail filter… And ‘conversation view’ on one of my accounts is broken, but OK on the others.
  
• Command line printing to the MFD queues seems dead. While it seems merely vexing on older OS X releases (one has to manually authenticate each job) on El Cap it just hangs the print queue app. Since I’ve not used ‘lp’ in about 10 years I mostly missed this. Probably some sort of sandboxing or keychain thing; I filed a radar about it… [30/10 – this turned out to be a corrupted pref file on my Mac, the PrinterProxy.plist, though one still has to individually authenticate lpr jobs]
• (added 27/10) Time Machine does not work on desktop Macs connected to a UPS over USB. On MacBooks OS X does not run Time Machine when on battery power unless a checkbox in the TM preferences is checked. Looks like El Cap is assuming that the Mac is on permanent battery power, but of course does not reveal the option to tell it to back up anyway. Workaround – unplug the USB cable and do without auto-shutdown on power out.

More to be added as discovered.

With the release of El Capitan .1 last week I decided it was time to take the plunge and update. Everything on the Munki server side is now in place for the upgrade – to their credit Symantec were prompt to issue an update for SEP, and updates for other apps came out pretty quickly too. With the .1 update supposedly fixing the Office 2016 issues I figured it was time to move.

First I made sure I had good backups, using Time Machine and also Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I just ran the installer and let it do its thing. Afterwards I ran Managed Software Centre to update SEP, etc, and all seemed fine. Of course I’m now about 2 hours in, so there is plenty of time to regret this…

A few points to note

• The MacPorts update was very slow. I’m not sure of the cause but the self-update step took at least 10 minutes, which seems a lot. I don’t think this is an El Cap issue, just coincidental server slowness.
• GoodSync needs updates to quash various bugs.
• Anyone using GoodSync to backup their local mailboxes needs to note that under El Cap the local mailboxes have moved from ~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes to ~/Library/Mail/V3/Mailboxes and update their backups accordingly.

I’ve still not done much with an actual install of El Capitan, though I have it on an old MacBook Pro for testing. I have been working on some back-end things to make sure that machines using my Munki service should upgrade OK, and I think I’m about there – a test install of Yosemite with packages like Symantec EndPoint, Latex, etc upgraded OK, though with various caveats.

• You need to be running MacTeX 2015 for a smooth update due to restrictions on what can be installed in the ‘unix’ directories under El Cap.
• Symantec had an update for SEP out within a few days, and that seems OK. On my Munki service I have set things so the update is only pushed to machines running El Cap as the previous version seems to be fine on Yosemite, and I don’t see the point in fixing what ain’t broke.
• MS Office 2016 seems to be badly broken, and according to Microsoft the fixes will be coming from Apple in an OS X update. How much this affects you depends on how much you use Office. Me – not at all.
• MacPorts has been updated and supports El Cap, though as always a reinstall of all ports is needed for a major OS update.
• IDL 8.5 seems to be OK, though it does not officially support El Cap.
• Ureka (IRAF) already explicitly supports El Cap in the latest release – 1.5.2.
• X11 seems OK under xquartz 2.77 but 2.78 seems close to release with some bug fixes.

At the moment I still don’t recommend installing El Cap on a ‘work’ machine which you can’t afford to lose. Maybe once 10.11.1 is out – though I have some new incoming Macs which I assume will ship with El Cap now, so they’ll be ‘volunteering’ to test.

Still alive, just been busy with building decants, summer schools, and conferences. And turning old Macs into furniture.

And now it’s the new academic year and Apple releases El Capitan… I’ve not even had time to play with a beta, let alone the release version, and probably won’t for a while.

Things I’ve read about El Capitan:

• It doesn’t suffer the /usr/local/ migration problem which slowed down Yosemite updates
• Apparently XQuartz survives the update too
• You need to be running MacTeX 2015 to avoid issues arising from the restrictions that the SIP feature imposes

Munki seems to be OK with El Capitan, but MS Office seems to have serious issues. Outlook 2011 simply does not work in Exchange mode, though IMAP is OK. Office 2016 seems generally crashy too. And Symantec Endpoint AV is totally broken by the update with no (public) ETA for an update. I have to say the latter is the least concerning; in all the time I’ve been running SEP it’s not flagged anything, and I think the need for AV on the Mac remains marginal, but so long as it works and doesn’t kill my Mac I’ll tolerate it. However if it’s a case of updating to El Capitan in a week or so with lots of security fixes, versus waiting for Symantec, I know what I’m doing!