System update installations seem to fail after I upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion

Dear friends:

System update installations seem to fail after I upgraded Lion to
Mountain Lion (10.8.2).

When I tried to install Apple's extra recommended update to 10.8.2,
and also the last Safari update, and also the last iTunes update to
11.0.1, using the "Software Update" menu, the install process goes OK
up to the very, very end, when an update failure message appears.

But if I check the about menu of Safari and iTunes, after the failed
installation, all are in their latest version. Also, if I go to the
Software Menu, it says to me that I don't have any pending
installation. So, apparently, independently of the failure message,
the install process ended OK.

Please note that before any system installation I boot to the recovery
partition, and I check the disk and its permissions, and always they
are OK. Also, after the supposedly failed installations, I went to the
Console app and searched for any Installer log, but I couldn't find
any.

Any hint?


Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)

 

Dear Jolly & friends:

A very good question!!!!

But to get an exact copy of the message, I will need to wait until
Apple gives us another system update!!!!!

But as far I remember, it was very simple: "Update installation
failed", without any explanation.

Please note that the message appeared at the very, very end of the
process, when the horizontal thermometer marking the time to finish
was full on the right.

Another clue. This happens only with Apple's updates, not when
updating apps from another manufacturer even if the update came from
Apple's Store.

I hope this help.


Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)

 

The Installer log is located at /var/log/install.log, with older ones
archived and compressed, using an incrementing sequence number as they
get older, starting with "install.log.0.bz2", then the next older one is
"install.log.1.bz2", etc. I have six archived files, dating back a
little over three months.

You should be able to see them in Console, by clicking "Show Log List"
in the toolbar, then clicking the triangle next to "/var/log" to reveal
all the log files in that folder.

These files include logs generated by Installer (manual installation of
..pkg files, e.g. from a downloaded .dmg), Software Update checks and
installations (whether done from the command line tool, "Software
Update" in Lion or earlier, or App Store in Mountain Lion), and
"installd" (which can be invoked via other methods, e.g. on-demand
install of a printer driver).

Mine also has messages from my recent download of "Server" from App
Store, which triggered installation of server-related components
elsewhere, but I wouldn't expect similar from regular app downloads from
App Store, so they might not be mentioned in this log at all.

 

Dear David & friends:

I did it exactly as you suggest. Unfortunately, there isn't any
"install.log.*" under "/var/log/".


Thanks
Juan I. Cahis
Santiago de Chile (South America)

 

(I should have mentioned that in older OS X versions, Console shows this
directory path as "/private/var/log" rather than "/va/log". "/var" is
actually a symbolic link to "/private/var".)

Is there anything under /var/log in your Console? There should be
system.log, daily.out, weekly.out, monthly.out, and a bunch of others.

The lack of an install.log suggests something is preventing it being
written, so the question is whether it is the entire log directory at
fault, or something else.

 

Dear David & friends:

Yes, there are many logs in "/var/log/", but none with the word "install"
in its name. I will look if a "/private/var/log" console folder exist.

Originally, my MacBook Pro came with Tiger installed, then I upgraded it to
Leopard, then to Snow Leopard, then to Lion, and then to Mountain Lion,
without any problem, but never doing an install from scratch, always
upgrading it.