OSX 10.5.2 Update Headache
February 11, 2008 9:08 PM | 4

 

The Mac was not JUST WORKING very well tonight.

I upgraded to 10.5.2, because I always like to have the newest and best of everything. It's why I'm so popular with women. Once the computer had rebooted, though, I couldn't connect to the Internet.

So, start the usual troubleshooting: use my iPhone to try to connect to the wifi. Not working. Try to connect to 192.168.0.1 (the modem) in a browser. Not working. Try to ping 192.168.0.1 in Terminal -- and that did work, oddly enough. Same behavior from 192.168.1.1 (the wifi router). So, unplug everything, reboot it all, plug it all back in ... and still nothing.

I should mention that our DSL modem is a Siemens SpeedStream 4100, and our wifi router is a Linksys WRT54GS with "SpeedBoost," which I like to call "SpoodBeast." Why am I mentioning all this? For the benefit of Googlers. (Hopefully, you found this page by Googling Linksys or OSX, and not by Googling "spoodbeast.")

Anyway, so next I did some recabling and bypassed the router, jacking the modem directly into the iMac. That worked fine -- okay, so the problem is the router. Reboot again; unplug and replug; nothing was working. I could now connect to the router just fine in Firefox, but beyond that, the Internet wasn't Internetting.

Then I tried to connect to the router in Safari. When I attempted to access the router via Safari, the app popped up an "enter password" dialog, with an option to retain the password in the keychain. Okay, sure -- I entered the password, and saved it to my keychain.

And then suddenly I heard Google Notifier chiming and Adium logging in to my Yahoos. Oooooookay ... so did the 10.5.2 update somehow affect my keychain, preventing all of the apps on the computer from accessing the router until I reminded it of the router's password? That doesn't make any sense. And why would that have affected my iPhone? What, as they say, the fuck?

I don't know. But everything is finally working again. So ... hoorah.