Downgrade from Snow Leopard Server to SL (non-server)

Is that possible to downgrade from SL Server to SL without making a clean install ?
I've just bought a standard version of Lion and I can't install it...
Thanks

Hi
You can't install Lion Server (which is simply the Server App) without installing Lion anyway. What this means is you can install 'ordinary' Lion on your existing Snow Leopard Server and provided you don't download and launch the Server App your Snow Leopard Server won't really be a Server anymore. Leastways not with any usuable 10.6 Server Administration applications (Server Admin, WorkGroup Manager etc) that you can use as these are all deleted/removed when Lion is installed.
HTH?
Tony

Similar Messages

Downgrading from Snow Leopard back to leopard?

IVE HAD IT!! lol. This operating system has sooo many flaws so far. Is it possible to downgrade back to leopard from snow leopard?

If you do an erase and install, then, yes, you will have to reinstall everything with two major exceptions. If you make a bootable clone of your Sno install on an external drive, then you can migrate your user, settings, data, and apps from the clone. However, it looks like you have a troubled Sno install. So, I think you would be asking for trouble is you migrate anything but your data. Still, you might take a chance on migrating your apps. I might try if reinstalling them would be a huge undertaking. Essentially the same comments apply if you have a TM backup, although sometimes TM won't restore from a backup made under one system to a different system. I wouldn't take a chance on using TM under the circumstances.

Legality when downgrading from snow leopard to leopard OS

Hello all,
I have been looking through the apple terms and conditions of their software and I am unable to find anything regarding downgrades of operating systems.
If I have purchased a Macbook Pro w/ snow Leopard installed from factory, Am I allowed to downgrade the Operating system to Leopard without purchasing a new copy of leopard. Lets say I borrowed the DVD from a friend.
Can I do this legally? Yes or No?
Whatever the answer is, I need undisputable proof quoted directly from the apple support website. Thank you all

FernandoR wrote:
Hello all,
I have been looking through the apple terms and conditions of their software and I am unable to find anything regarding downgrades of operating systems.
If I have purchased a Macbook Pro w/ snow Leopard installed from factory, Am I allowed to downgrade the Operating system to Leopard without purchasing a new copy of leopard. Lets say I borrowed the DVD from a friend.
Can I do this legally? Yes or No?
Whatever the answer is, I need undisputable proof quoted directly from the apple support website.
geez, do you maybe want a phone call directly from Steve Jobs?
it certainly won't be legal if you use a borrowed disk. a leopard license clearly and indisputably states that you can only install it on one computer.
*2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.*
*A. Single Use. This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-*
*labeled computer, or to enable others to do so. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time, and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time.*
but this is quite irrelevant because you won't be able to install it anyway as it won't run. you can't install an earlier OS than the one the computer came with as it lacks necessary hardware drivers for the newer computers.

Downgrading from Snow Leopard to Leopard: Best Practices?

Hey everyone. Snow Leopard isn't working out for me (slowness, crashing, etc.), so I plan on downgrading back to Leopard for the foreseeable future via a clean install.
I utilize Time Machine with an external hard drive, within contains all of my files/documents/music for two user accounts. When I downgrade to Leopard, can I simply restore these accounts/files using migration assistant? Or am I going to have a problem restoring Snow Leopard backups to Leopard?
Finally, is this the best way to go about this process, or is there a better way?

Snow Leopard is simply running like crap. Everything is slower. Crashes occur. Neither of which was the case with Leopard. I think it is safe to say that my problems are manifestations of Snow Leopard, not OS X (or Leopard) in general.
Snow Leopard as a whole should not cause such issues. It is obvious you have some contributing factor that would be much easier to isolate than backtracking to 10.5, unless of course you have a clone or Time Machine backup of your system when it was in 10.5.
How big is your hard drive, and how full is it? If there is less than 15% + 9 GB free, you need to free up space based on past user experience. See my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
Sometimes old fonts can cause problems:
http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html
If you migrated from a PowerPC Mac in the past, you may need to remigrate without the Migration Assistant in the future:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=435350&tstart=0
As it can bring over a lot of old applications and drivers that don't work with Snow Leopard.
Do you have any peripherals that are not known to be 10.6 compatible? See my upgrade FAQ above for references to utilities or applications that are not yet 10.6 compatible. If they aren't listed in those references, chances are they either are not compatible or may be more compatible if they are enabled/disabled to run in 64 bit, or Rosetta mode.
To change the 64 bit or Rosetta mode in your application, click on it once in the Finder, and select Get Info. A checkbox should reveal whether or not it can run in a different mode if it is available.
By default Snow Leopard is in 32 bit mode as an operating system. You may be able to enable 64 bit operating system if all your applications can run with it, following one of these steps:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=4716
This should speed you along if you have that option available.
Three options which for whatever reason appear to help people for unknown reasons:
zapping the PRAM
repairing the directory and permissions*
If none of those help, you may simply have a hardware issue with your machine that simply manifests itself more frequently with Snow Leopard. Sometimes these can be isolated with the hardware test. Other times, it may simply indicate you have a RAM issue. Every new operating system is more sensitive to out of spec RAM or marginal RAM*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
And while the hardware test may catch some bad RAM, it can't catch all.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

Question about downgrading from Snow Leopard to Leopard

After many problems with Snow Leopard (unable to print, programs crashing, dissatisfaction with the new Preview, etc., etc.), I have decided to go back to plain old Leopard for the time being. I was perfectly happy with version 10.5.8 and had no problems whatsoever with it. I'm a freelancer and need my system to be working right. Maybe someday, I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard, but not for a while.
I plan on using Time Machine to restore my old system. The only problem is that I forgot the day I did the upgrade. I think it was either last Thursday or Friday, but I'm not sure.
Is there a way that I can see exactly when I did the upgrade so that I can be sure to restore from my latest backup?
Thanks for any advice.

You will need to boot from your Leopard installer DVD and do an Erase and Install. You cannot reliably downgrade any other way. As for restoring from TM all you really need do is post installation use Migration Assistant which will then restore your Home folder, third-party applications, support files, network preferences from your TM backup (or any other backup.) Just be sure that during the Setup Assistant you create the initial admin account using a different user (short) name than the one you normally use. Migration Assistant will restore a Home folder, but it will not overwrite nor update an existing Home folder with the same username. After you migrate the account and restart the computer, log into your old account. Verify it has admin status, change auto-login to the account, then restart to be sure all is working correctly. If so then delete the initial account created during setup.

Downgrading from Snow Leopard to Leopard 10.56. Possible?

Will it be possible to return to Leopard? I want to use 10.56. I didn't have any problems with it. Photoshop CS 1 worked fine on it. On Snow Leopard I have problems with "Move a layer" with Snow Leopard (even with Rosetta installed). Also, MS Word doesn't work that well. It takes forever to save and I can't copy and paste word files from MS Word to Pages. Other strange things. It started getting really slow to shut down and slow to boot. It's OK now but that's because of the fresh install, and I haven't updated to 10.63. I am scared to do that now. The only good thing was the extra gigabytes and Safari 4, but I don't use Safari much anyway, Opera is so fast.
And lots of whirling balls of death before I did the clean install.
I don't think the upgrade works very well - from Leopard to Snow Leopard, best to do a clean install.
However, I want to go back to Leopard as I didn't have any problems with it except maybe I couldn't get the latest upgrades of certain programs and I lost about 5GBs of space on my hard drive compared to Snow Leopard.
Also, Bootcamp doesn't work as well. I can't get the network to operate on Windows XP. On Leopard, it transferred seamlessly without having to adjust the control panel or anything. Now, my only choice is unsecured wireless network. I don't want financial data to be unsecured when doing internet banking or purchasing with a credit card.
What is the point of Snow Leopard? Seems like Apple's aware of problems with it but no solutions are coming. Life is too short to worry about Update beta, update combo or whatever. Or whether 6.2 is btter than 6.1 etc.
How do I go about doing the clean install?
Will there be any problems because I will be transferring files like Safari which have a higher version than Leopard can handle? What should I do in that case? Will the lower version of applications install automatically?
I don't know how it will work out. I've never downgraded the operating system before. It's always been up.
Will it be OK or will I have to do a lot of fiddling around afterwards? Because I'm not good at that.
Thanks.
One last question: Should I do a clean install or just stick the disk in and do an install?
Will the second one wipe the data off my machine?

Thanks. What I meant by downgrade is: is it possible to put OS 10.56 on my computer and put all the same files on it (later)? I think the answer is yes but I have to do a clean install.
I will have to use Migration Assistant on my MBA.

Can you downgrade from Snow Leopard to Leopard if MacBook Pro is shipped with SNL

I have recently purchased a MBP with 10.6.8 already installed but it came with no disks and i wish to fromat to get it truley cleaned up. I have my shop bought Leopard i pruchased for my Imac and my leopard disks that came with a later MB, when i insert the leopard disk when booted it reads ok hit the install button MBP reboots but just sits with white/blue screen and nothing happens. Tried rebooting and holding C still nothing happens apart from the MBP does not boot up but hangs. Tried pressing alt at boot up and the option to choose the disk appears I select it nothing happens yet the mouse no longer moves, it just sits there. The disk is fine as i used it to reformat a friends MB 1 hour before i attempted mine.
So if the MBP came with SNL already installed can you not roll back to leopard, or is there something I'm missing.
model: 15.4 MBP 2.8ghz core duo 500hdd 4gb ram etc...

Hi all
Ok so I went ot the local Apple shop and they have stopped stocking SNL but advised i can download Lion and install and even though it didn't format i could when installed boot to the recovery partion -utilities and erase from there and then do a full install thus allowing a full format.
So erase done click install lion and it connected to the net and then sat for some time so what i'm asking is does this now have to down load the 4gb image again. I assumed it installed from the partition but will it download and install if so this could take some time as the Lion download took approx 8 hours.
Please tell me that is not the case as that is seriously flawed and left me in a dodgy position as i have erased my hdd and will have to wait till i can get a day off to run the next install.
as a foot note i was advised to copy the image and then burn so i would have a hard copy i did this would it be quicker to do it from thi disc.
thanks in advance

After upgrading to Lion from Snow Leopard, mail server does not receive incoming email

After upgrading my server last night [2011.07.20] from Snow Leopard to Lion, my mail server settings went belly up. After toying around with the server, its certificates and what-not, I was able to get it running, but it is no longer receiving any emails [neither internally nor from Gmail, Yahoo, etc.].
I can send emails via SMTP just fine [using SSL] to external email accounts [and it doesn't complain when I address an email to an internal email account, but I can't verify that it's sending it to the internal email account because it won't receive!].
The Connection Doctor says that it is indeed connecting properly to the server [incoming = IMAP, outgoing = SMTP], so there is communication between Mail 5.0 [and also Thunderbird as well] and the mail server. The problem appears to be the mail server not receiving any emails - from internal or external addresses.
Anyone else having this problem or know of a fix for it?
Thanks!

Did you find a solution to this issue? My mail server is doing the same thing. I've tried six migrations now, and have a couple of tickets open, but they all have issues. I have worked around all of them except the mail server problem.
I did some more digging; the problem appears to be that on a migrated server, it leaves all of your mail store in the old location, doesn't move it, and then doesn't appear to upgrade spam-assassin properly. The net effect is that the mail server gets the SMTP communication, tries to pass the message into spam assassin, and then it goes south.
I see errors like this littered in the logs:
Jul 31 13:53:10 mail org.amavis.amavisd[5927]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /var/amavis/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed:
Jul 31 13:53:10 mail org.amavis.amavisd[5927]: bayes: cannot open bayes databases /var/amavis/.spamassassin/bayes_* R/O: tie failed: No such file or directory
Do you see anything similar?

Help (please) w/ Full System Restore after downgrading from Snow to Leopard

Yes. I should have created a separate partition, cloned the drive, etc…. But everything was working so well I figured an upgrade to SL would make things amazing. Wrong.
So I downgraded from Snow Leopard to Leopard, using a clean Erase and Install from the OSX DVD that came with my Mac. Told by an AppleCare techie that I could restore my system from a Time Machine BackUp, I was confident that when the install successfully completed I would be able to restore from the TM Backup I made PRIOR TO installing Snow Leopard.
However, the 'restore system from time machine…' option that came up at the end of the Leopard installation told me I only have one TM backup, the latest one made under Snow Leopard (which obviously cannot be used to restore a system now running on Leopard.
When I log into the OS, I can open TM and choose the last 10.5 (Leopard) backup I made, but it seems to only let me restore the 'Macintosh HD' as a folder. So here is where I am stuck:
How can I restore my system - now on a clean install of Leopard - to the last TM backup I made under the selfsame OS. {Sorry if this is a simpleton question - I just really do not want to ** anything up}.

.adamo wrote:
Thanks, Pondini -
Good to know the AppleCare rep. I talked to (apparently) knew nothing about time machine or how to restore a system from it. I was given nothing but wrong and bad advice…
Yeah, unfortunately that seems to happen on occasion. They don't seem to have access to decent info on things they don't understand, or just "wing it" or something.
Anyway, the erase and install happened, so at least my system is 'fresh'. I booted from the OSX DVD, went into the Utilities menu, found the TM Back-up I wanted, et voila. But it seems I could have bypassed the whole erase/install thing and just restored with the BackUp from TM.
So I must say, to Apple's credit, that TM works extremely well, and exactly as described; couldn't have been more painless (not what I'm used to with computers, at all).
That's why you got a Mac! (They're certainly not perfect, but they're pretty good!).
Glad it's sorted out, and thanks for the star!

Complications migrating from Snow Leopard Server to Mountain Lion Server.

I'm migrating from Snow Leopard Server to Mountain Lion Server. The article "OS X Server: Upgrade and migration" (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5381) says
"Make sure that any DNS or DHCP servers on which your server depends remain running during the upgrade"
This advice is reinforced by the details of the article "OS X Server: Steps to take before upgrading or migrating the Open Directory database" (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5300).
As the server I'm migrating from provides these services it will need to be running during the migration process. This would seem to limit my options to doing the migration from a Time Machine backup (or, making a seperate clone of the server's drive and connecting it externally to the new box)
My main concern is the seemingly inevitable clash that is going to occur on the network as the new server takes on the roles of the old one - while it is still running.
What are my options here ?
This is my second attempt as on my first try I did the migration from the TM backup with the network down - and none of my local network users or their home directories were migrated, although the settings for the mount points were, but there were no actual directories where they pointed to!
Clear directions on how to procede would be VERY MUCH appreciated
Thank you.

Moving from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion means first installing the client (non-Server) version of Mountain Lion and then install Server.app this means that for at least part of the process you will not be running DNS, DHCP or Open Directory.
If you are going to end up using the same DNS name and IP address after the change then an approach you could follow would be as follows.
Destroy any Open Directory replicas
Archive your Open Directory Master (to make a backup)
Note down your DNS records in case they get messed up
Export via Workgroup Manager your users, and groups (you might not need this but better safe than sorry), make sure you do not include the diradmin account
Keep a full back of the server (you should always have backups)
Note down your DHCP server settings in case they get messed up
Note down any other service settings
Install Mountain Lion
Install Server.app
Install Workgroup Manager (extra free download)
Run Server.app
Make sure settings for services are as much as possible the same as before
If your lucky that may be all you need to do, otherwise...
Restore Open Directory archive, if your lucky that will be all you need to do, otherwise...
Make new Open Directory Master
Run Workgroup Manager
Import users and groups you previously exported
You will then have to set passwords for each user as these are not preserved via Workgroup Manager export
When I did this, I was also being forced to change all my IP addresses so I had no choice but to use Workgroup Manager to export and import accounts.

Install Snow Leopard Server Software on non server version mac mini (2009)

Recently purchased Snow Leopard Server software to install on a early 2009 mac mini (non server version) running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. My goal is to set up and manage a server for a small group and leverage some of services from snow leopard server.
First of all, can server software be installed on a early 2009 mac min configured with Mac OS X Snow Leopard? This 2GHz Intel Core Duo mac mini has 2GB Ram and 120GB HD. Will the server software install remove the current snow leopard software or is there any special steps I need to take to get the server version software loaded on this mac mini. Any suggestions or advise is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Yes you can install it on your mini And Yes it will wipe the mini clean with a fresh install of the server software.
Suggestions ... Learn DNS there are many links on this forum to MrHoffmans very useful notes as well as many discussions about this topic , there is a steep learning curve ahead if its a first time for you !

Migrating from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion Server

Hi all. I kinda drop in and out of this forum, mostly when I've got a puzzler that I can't figure out. My journey from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion was a little slow. I tried to make the transition from Snow Leopard to Lion and failed, but this time I made it and I thought I'd share a little scratchpad post I wrote to document what I did. Mostly this is about adding back a few things that I really need. Here's the list of stuff that I added back:
Firewall management (IceFloor)
MySQL
Webmail, email filtering rules and email aliases (RoundCube)
"Group" emails (short, multi-recipient email exploders)
Mailing lists (Mailman)
I also dramatically improved reliability by adding a lot of memory, and doing nightly-restarts of the machine.
Here's a link to the post
http://www.haven2.com/index.php/archives/migrating-from-snow-leopard-server-to-o sx-server-mountain-lion
I'm happy to report that the new server has been running for a month or so and all seems fine. Whew. A long journey. Thanks to all of you who posted things that helped me along the way. Hopefully this will return the favor.

Moving from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion means first installing the client (non-Server) version of Mountain Lion and then install Server.app this means that for at least part of the process you will not be running DNS, DHCP or Open Directory.
If you are going to end up using the same DNS name and IP address after the change then an approach you could follow would be as follows.
Destroy any Open Directory replicas
Archive your Open Directory Master (to make a backup)
Note down your DNS records in case they get messed up
Export via Workgroup Manager your users, and groups (you might not need this but better safe than sorry), make sure you do not include the diradmin account
Keep a full back of the server (you should always have backups)
Note down your DHCP server settings in case they get messed up
Note down any other service settings
Install Mountain Lion
Install Server.app
Install Workgroup Manager (extra free download)
Run Server.app
Make sure settings for services are as much as possible the same as before
If your lucky that may be all you need to do, otherwise...
Restore Open Directory archive, if your lucky that will be all you need to do, otherwise...
Make new Open Directory Master
Run Workgroup Manager
Import users and groups you previously exported
You will then have to set passwords for each user as these are not preserved via Workgroup Manager export
When I did this, I was also being forced to change all my IP addresses so I had no choice but to use Workgroup Manager to export and import accounts.

Upgrade from Snow Leopard Server to Lion Server hangs at configuring services...

I am running the Mac mini with snow leopard server 2.53 ghz 2GB of ram, 2x500GB hard drives, and have followed through the process to install Lion Server. The installation appears to be hung at the Configuring Services section of the setup process. I have left it for a couple of hours and nothing has progressed.
Should I leave it longer, hoping that it will work through the process (if in fact it is working through something)?
How long should this normally take?
As this is my work server, hosting mail, web, FTP, and file sharing, it is rather important to get it up and running as quickly as possible.
Any thoughts on how I can get it moving?
Hard power off of the Mac Mini reboots the machine, then proceeds back to the setup page, and then hangs on the same Configuring Services.
Any assistance would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

Lion Server Upgraders,
beware and proceed with caution.
Apple web site is naively optimistic on the upgrade process:
"To upgrade your Mac to OS X Lion, you don’t need to drive to a store, bring home a box, and install a bunch of discs. All you do is click the Mac App Store icon, buy Lion for $29.99, and your Mac does the rest. Just make sure you have what you need to download Lion to your Mac."
And then has a 3 step process...
This is completely miss leading.
Read this document first: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/lion_server_upgrading_migrating.pdf
It will make it readily apparent that moving from Snow Leopard Server to Lion is not going to be simple.
Having done this twice now.. I have found that:
1. Open Directory migration is a weak point. Lion & Snow Leopard Open Directory are not compatible, so if you have masters & replica then expect trouble. I have an unresolved issue trying to get a simple Lion Server to Lion Server Open Directory replica up and running. This compatibility seems to also cause migration to fail, as I found that all my local User/Groups transferred ok but non of the /127.0.0.1/LDAPv3 (Open Directory) ones did. This is a very important item, as all the mail accounts in dovecot use LDAP generated UID, so you have to be careful that you do not loose mail accounts.
2. Mail - your mail aliases will not transferred, so you will need to reapply the aliases.
3. Web Server Setup - This broke, under migration as I gather the entire Web serving tree has changed. In particular I had "Snow Leopard" Web Mail (which is based on Squirel) on my "Snow Leopard" Server and this is now dead...
4. Digital Certificates - I found that the valid (ie signed by trusted CA's) did not get migrated, so I had to re-imported my Digital Certificates. If you have paid for third party CA certificates then make sure you have got these copied somewhere, as if you loose them then you will likely need to go to your provider and get a certificate revocation and new certificate, which will cost you money!
Cheers,
Zebity.

How to Downgrade to Snow Leopard from Retail disk

Hi there
We have a new iMac at work bought through Apple's refurb site. It is running the latest version of Lion with all firmware updates, etc. It is replacing a G5 running Tiger.
The problem is this – it is supposed to be running Adobe CS5, but also CS4 (and Office would be handly also)
We have other macs here, some running Leopard, some Snow Leopard, but the Adobe apps are not happy at all in Lion, and InDesign CS4 crashes all the time and won't even print without jumping through a million hoops (obviously the Office 2004 app won't run at all).
Due to the level of issues we are having with Lion (and the reliability of the all the software under Snow Leopard) I am looking to downgrade to Snow Leopard.
I have a full retail version of Snow Leopard (10.6.3), but the Lion system won't boot from the disk, it just gets to the grey screen, and beeps three times. I presume this means that there isn't the required drivers on the disk to run the hardware, or there's a firmware update that doesn't allow installation.
Am i totally stuck with this OS? I was looking to install Snow Leopard on a partiton, but when i run the install disk from the Lion desktop, it reports that I can't run it because 'I have Install Mac OS X 23.1.1.'
I would really like to just have Snow Leopard on my iMac, or failing that, Lion on a small partition, and Snow Leopard and all the programs on the larger partition that I would boot from.
Any ideas how I can get this done? Adobe CS suite is just rubbish on Lion macs, and runs worse than on my old Tiger mac.
Thanks in advance,
M.

Mac_fool wrote:
oh right - so clone Mac B onto Mac A HD in taget disk mode using SuperDuper (or Carbon Copy Cloner), then i'll be able to boot Mac A in SL.
I understand that Mac A wouldn't boot, I was going to make Mac A's SL partition the start-up partition for Mac B, and then try and install OS updates to 10.6.8 from Mac B. Once updates are installed - change Mac B's startup disk back, and then surely Mac A would be able to boot all on it's own...
I'm not sure if this would work in Target Disk Mode, but if you succeed in cloning Mac B to Mac A, you may be able to apply the Combo 10.6.8 update to Mac A while booting from Mac B. The key is that the Combo updater may be able to customize the Snow Leopard installation for the hardware it's actually being applied to. Unless I missed it, we don't really know which iMac you have since it's a refurb. According to Mactracker, only the Late 2011 21.5" comes only with Lion and might not accept Snow Leopard at all. At the same time, it has the same Model Identifier as the Mid 2011, which came with 10.6.6 or 10.6.7 so it might work.
If at that point Mac A does boot in Snow Leopard, I'd advise running the 10.6.8 Combo updater again while booting from Mac A just to be safe.

I just upgraded my 2008 macbook pro to OS X Maverick from Snow Leopard but my computer is running a bit buggy and slow. How do I downgrade back down to snow leopard?

I just upgraded my 2008 macbook pro to OS X Maverick from Snow Leopard but my computer is running a bit buggy and slow. How do I downgrade back down to snow leopard?

You would reinstall 10.6 using your installation DVD.
Out of curiosity, how much RAM do you have? Recent versions of OS X really shine with 4GB or more.
Matt

Downgrade from Snow Leopard Server to SL (non-server)

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