Mac alive, part Trois

Last Sunday, I get a copy of Mac OS X.3 (Panther) on CD, from a friend, to test if this version could be installed on the Power Mac. As, I didn't success to install Mac OS X.4 (Tiger) on it, may be a previous version could help. So during the last 3 days I tried to install, and install, and install, and even install the CDs... but nothing helped out. I always got the same error at the end of the CD 1 installation : "There were errors during the installation".

Last evening, I decided again to get a chance to my new old Power Mac G3 (white & blue)... I switched it on, and put the brand old CD 1 into the DVD player.... and the first CDs did install ! The Mac rebooted, and asked me for the second CD ( where are stored iLife, language packs and printer drivers)... My happiness lasted 3 minutes. I got again the famous sentence.

However the base system is still installed correctly, I quit the installer, and hopefully, I can install dmg and pkg files directly from the CD, from the Finder. Just double click on the icons. So did I, and re-install itunes, iphoto, imovie, ical, isync, epson drivers, and french language pack.

I was really happy ! I got a functional Mac \o/

Now, the harder part is to come : updating the brand new OS to 10.3.9. And this is were the picture really began to fade out, but not that long...

Using the Software Update from the Apple menu, I could update some packages, but the most important was the 10.3.9 update Combo Pack. 117 MB length. And... it failed to install ! I tried 3 or 4 times, and always got the same dialog at the end : Check if you have permission to write in /tmp/501/TemporaryFile/com.....

Of course, being a linux guy, I thought : there're wrong permissions in the directory... I fired up the Terminal and chmod 777 /tmp/501/TemporaryFile directory. I know these temp files aren't very important, so 777 wouldn't damage anything. But this change didn't move the dialog out of the way.

I used then plan B ! That is, installing every updated from 10.3 to 10.3.9 : ie 10.3.1, 10.3.2, 10.3.3, 10.3.4, 10.3.5, 10.3.6, 10.3.7, 10.3.8 and 10.3.9. so I downloaded all these .dmg files on my computer and took my time to install, optimise, reboot, install, optimise, reboot (repeat this up to 10.3.5).

When 10.3.5 came to the end, the installer told me there were errors (argh, nooooo)... So I reinstalled this version again (thanks, I downloaded it on my desktop). But here were still errors....
It was about 1am. I rebooted the Power Mac... and come back on the desktop. I look at the "About this Mac"dialog (from the Apple menu) which told me I was using OS 10.3.5 !!!!

Ok, good :) ready for next update.. I double clicked on the 10.3.6 update... which returned error -5360820 or so. I cried and go to bed (after switching off the mac, of course).