[cfarm-users] cfarm104 updates and likely downtime

[Zach van Rijn]

On Wed, 2026-07-15 at 08:20 -0500, Zach van Rijn via cfarm-users
wrote:
> ...
> 
> History indeed repeats.

tl;dr: cfarm104 is OK, we have the option to upgrade to M2 but I
want to solicit opinions about whether to keep it as M1.

> 
> After the update, the machine auto-booted into Recovery Mode.
> 
> This matches the behavior of the previous update. However
> unlike the last update, rebooting it once more was not
> successful.

Two more reboots and it came up, which is a relief but is a bit
frustrating because of the uncertainty and effort involved.

Each reboot takes over an hour at the black "loading" screen.
There must be some kind of timeout. I have no idea what it does.

Once it successfully boots, future reboots take under a minute.

> 
> I've taken the machine home to work on it. I don't expect that
> any data on the system will be lost. I will make a backup of
> the critical files and keys, and also the user directories,
> and then restore this to a fresh installation of macOS if it
> doesn't come back online magically when I boot it up again.

I've backed up the data and upgraded Homebrew but opted to not
reinstall the OS from scratch for two reasons:

(1) Lack of interest/time to do so without the guarantee that it
fixes future updates if the root cause may be volume of users.

(2) There is now the possibility of upgrading this to an M2
machine, as someone gave me an M2 Mac Mini recently for free, so
if I am going to put the effort in to migrate, it'll be once.

Caveat: I cannot add the M2 machine as a new CFarm system and
keep the M1 (cfarm104) side-by-side due to limited rack space
and the fact that I need one of these machines for personal use.

The question is therefore: shall we keep the macOS cfarm104 as
the M1 so that it has the same CPU as the Linux cfarm103 M1?

This is my preferred option.

--> if yes, it will be online in a day or two.

Or would it be preferable to have an M2 system available as a
drop-in replacement for cfarm104, keeping all keys/data/etc.?

It would give us an M2, but Apple is already at M5 and beyond.
Personally I don't think it is worth it.

--> if yes, it will be online within a week


> I think these were not designed to accommodate 1000+ accounts
> and I'm not pleased that the update process is opaque.

As before, I had to run the user fixup script that I shared in a
previous message. About 90% of the accounts needed patching.
Spot checking some accounts shows no errors or inconsistencies.


ZV