I pulled the plug, did i damage my iMac?

Question

After installing the latest security update 1.1 from my software update it seemed to go well until the restart. The screen went grey and the circle kept spinning and spinning. I tried to shut down using the button on rear but nothing, it just kept spinning. Finally I pulled the plug. I started it up again using the back button and it started fine. Installer log says the update is installed. I checked HD with disc utility from the install disc and repaired permissions which was OK except for the usual Suid warnings. My question is, did I do any damage to my machine by pulling the plug? Do I need to do any other maintenance to make sure all is well.

Answer 1

It all depends on what it was doing while the spinning was occurring.
There are a few issues that could come up.
Data in buffers may not have been sync'd to the disk. So depending on what that data was (update files, documents, etc.) it could be lost.
Permissions or access controls that were being applied could be missing or corrupted - but your repair of permissions should have taken care of that.
Files that were being uncompressed at the time may never have been uncompressed and you could end up with mixed up versions of files.
My recommendation would be to:
- Hold down 'command-v' when you boot this next time from right after the chime to when you start getting data on the screen. This will take away the screen masks when the system starts and stops.
- Re-apply the security update and let it finish. You'll be able to see what it's doing as it shuts down, so it should make things a little more comfortable than just watching the icon spin.
- If you are always impatient with updates, you may want to make verbose booting permanent. You can do this by editing /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and adding a -v between the two string tags under the kernel flags key.