Apple Software Update problem after using SuperDuper

[dnanian]

Hi -- thanks for getting in touch!

This isn't something we've ever encountered before in our testing, so I'm going to need a bit more information from you to try to either duplicate or diagnose the situation at my end.

(Note that I've done hundreds of full-volume clones over the past year or so, and haven't ever seen this problem -- which isn't intended to excuse the issue, but rather to say that something unexpected was encountered, and we'll do our best to get you back on track ASAP.)

First: is there anything "unusual" about your system or disk configuration? Are you using anything strange like NFS mount points, an isolated Users volume, NetBoot or the like?

Second: what copy script did you use to create the duplicate volume? Did you modify it at all?

What's unusual here is that we exclude the /tmp directory tree (actually /private/var/tmp) when a full clone is made -- so that tree was recreated by the system after you rebooted... very strange that you wouldn't be able to write into something that was just created.

Are you comfortable using the Terminal? If so, could you send me a listing of /tmp/501/Temporary Items, using the command:

ls -ln /tmp/501/Temporary\ Items

and another of:

ls -ln /tmp/501/Temporary\ Items/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate

That'll help me try to see what might be happening.

Thanks very much for your patience while we try to figure out what went wrong here.

If you have the time, and you're in the US, send me some mail to support-at-shirt-pocket.com with your name and phone number and I'll follow up on the telephone, at my expense. That might speed things along.

For anyone reading along, I'll summarize the result here.