nightmares

	...and so without any background info aside, (doesn't really matter), I
start off around 10-11 PM on Saturday eve finishing up on some random sys admin
crap, and decide that I wanted to see how well FileVault (encryption) worked
and so here comes the next mini-nightmare that would take me the next 24 hours
to get back to where I last left off. I thought this was going to be a 30-min
job (the length of time it took for FileVault to encrypt).

	A long, drawn out story made shorter, FileVault doesn't play very well with 
multiple partitions, nor does Time Machine like it overly too much either as I
found out. (Although if one is willing to lose the ability to browse through the 
snapshot versions, and deal with restoring two wholly separate backups, basically, 
you're able to get along with life. I wasn't willing.) FileVault doesn't play 
very well w/ a separate /Users cause you must log in as another user first -- 
with permissions to unlock said volume, then jump back to the user you wish to 
stay logged in as. Yuck. If only I understood the whole architecture better...

	Moved /Users back into the main installation / boot partition. TM absolutely
refused to let my custom partitioned hfs+ w/ case-sensitivity stay upon restore, 
even though the backups are case-sensitive filesystem themselves. Perhaps because
the original boot partition was indeed case-insensitive, whereas /Users wasn't.
	
	As you probably have realized, our Macbook Air's do not come with installation
discs. Interestly enough, even without the Recovery HD partition there, such as
if you accidently erased it as I had, you have the option of Internet-Install,
built-in via firmware -- it automatically defaults to this upon a non-functional
Recovery HD detection. What isn't so cool when you are having to restore multiple
times is the fact that you've got 4GB down the pipe to suck down each time.

	Interestly enough, the Installation image of OSX that you can purchase from
the App Store -- or pirate off the nets, as we did -- does not boot whatsoever
from newer Macs [1] such as ours. Spent the few hours it took to get around the 
lack of installation disc and now have obtained the proper InstallESD.dmg image 
necessary for reproducing a proper boot image, with the full OSX Lion installer. 
In hindsight, I feel certain that it's a future life saver for one of us.

	Waiting on the final copy to the previous TM backups drive so that I can then
format the original install partition as case-sensitive and rebootstrap as I damn
wished in the first place. Hopefully by the time I get back from eating, the copy
back to the partition will be finished, so I will be back where I left off at
9 PM in the evening on Saturday.
	
	I'm glad I bit the bullet and purchased a Mac SuperDrive :-D I'll also have
a 4GB dedicated partition on my TM backups disk for a hella faster boot of the 
installer, just in case... (It requires 8GB USB stick for the installer as it is
slightly over 4GB -_-)

1. http://www.macworld.com/article/165337/2012/02/create_a_bootable_lion_install_drive_for_newer_macs.html